The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Astros Take Game 2 vs Nationals, Messi Continue To Dominate World Cup, Big 12 & Monster?

Episode Date: July 8, 2026

Astros Take Game 2 vs Nationals, Messi Continue To Dominate World Cup, Big 12 & Monster? 

is the Matt Thomas show with Ross. In H-Town, good morning, and welcome to a Wednesday edition of the Matt Thomas show with Ross. This is Sports Talk 790. The Houston Astros even up this three-game series at a game apiece. Fun of the summertime on the pitch. As the kids would say, Rossi, it's a hot fun on the summertime in the nation's capital.

Not necessarily in New York City, where skycivers were falling down. I saw that. 32 floors. I guess it's not a skyscraper, but I was checking the news last night because I was trying to look for the storms, information on the storms that were hitting. And in

between that, there was like three or four murders, and then some buildings are collapsing and the world is falling apart. There's a cargo plane that's missing. And then also the streets are flooding. So everything's going great. You know what? According to the news, everything is amazing. I have zero problem with the floods, because

I had good rain yesterday in the air, and my water bills is nuts. Sorry, Matt. Anybody got time for high water bills? Well, maybe you said to tell you those 45-minute showers. Well, it is funny because we did have a family conversation about it, and there are now Peyton's home from after being in Bryan College Station for a while, so he's going to start taking his 45-minute showers. Carly takes hers.

Cameron takes him. I take mine, and Kim's probably in the 5-7-minute range. So we're a water-using family. What are you doing in there? Well, I've told you before. Working on your doctoral thesis? I do play by play. Okay.

I sing songs. Mm-hmm. You do full episodes of Price is Right. I also pretend I'm a game show host. Yeah. You do like a full Plinko? So in the sign of the times, I'm officially taking one step getting towards the, I mean, middle age, frankly, is not a 54, sadly. I wish it was, but it's not.

Sorry, I'm sorry you can face reality on that one. I know. How old are you again? 41. Oh yeah, you are middle age. That's okay. You're older. Yeah, I know. And you're never going to catch up. Which just bothers me, but that's a different issue. That's shame.

So what is the next time that an old ass does? He joins a Facebook group. Oh, no. I did. For crocheting? No, for the Price is Right fans. Price is Right fans? Yes. You guys argue over like which games are the best?

What are you doing there? I just joined it. Okay. And I'm in my first post. Uh-huh. And I said I would like to host the half hour version of the Price's Right if there is one. What's your name? Rod Roddy the Goat, 69?

Oh, it's Matt Thomas. Oh. Because if I'm going to eventually replace Drew Carey, they have to know who I am. And you have to start at the core. You're going to start with the diehards, the ones that join the Price's Right fan group. Got to rally the troops. I see. It's a grassroots movement. It's like a militia.

Because people who cry on the cross the country don't know who I am. Right. I mean, I think people don't know me here. I mean, some people. Yeah. We got callers in New Zealand and California. We crush in San Antonio. South Padreira Island.

We're destroying. Yeah. We're popular in Denver as well. Yes. But they don't know. The national scene needs know who I am. So that's what was my first inclination of welcoming myself to the Price's Right group. By saying that I would like to host a half hour of order.

You said, hi, my name is Matt. I would love to host the shows. You said? Would you like me to read it? Yes. I would love to you to read it. We have four hours here. And I love to hear how many thumbs up and how many comments you

Not many. There's this one guy who just, excuse me, blanks on everything that anybody posts. I think he's just an angry human being. Oh, there's an angry human being on Facebook. Who could have seen this coming? So, let me look at my post. Let's see.

Sad human beings. Good of life. I said, I'm new to the group. This is my goat game show followed by Dick Clark's Pyramid and Gene Rayburn's match game. I love this. My question, when I eventually get to host the new 30-minute nighttime version of the game,

no plans for it yet, but I won't dream do you think we should squeeze in four games instead of three play two short games one medium game and one longer game segment one could be like a game like any number followed by double prices segment two could be clock game followed by squeeze play segment three the showcases segment four showcase prices and clothes this is incredible i got two replies and two thumbs and one thumbs up nancy says i think it can be done let me know if you need an announcer and she puts a nice smile emoji Oh, nice. And then Harry Goldman, who's a real a-hole, said, won't work.

And that's all he responded to. Damn. Well, you know what? Harry Goldman's giving you the harsh criticism maybe you need to fuel you forward. This is fair. Again, not many radio shows in this country are going to open up with a Facebook post-group introduction, which I just gave you. But remember, we're on four hours. If we used to be three, but they stretch us out.

Yeah, Matt is stretched out, guys. So we stretch the material out. Yeah, they stretch. They stretched you out, huh Matt? Jonathan. He's the one provoking this, not me. Just don't let you know. I like how you're tattling on me too, Jonathan.

Welcome back, Chattahadhi is Chattin today. My goodness. Well, you relax. Oh, my God. Where's World Cup action? No. We're already into the quarters. I'm at the World Cup of female reporters,

and I know who's going to win the whole thing. There's only like six games left, so there's that three a day. I know who's going to win the Golden Boots. It's going to be Lauren Shahi. locked in on Shahati. Yeah. I thought you were going to give her the golden ball. That goes to the best player of the tournament.

What do you guys talking about? Why are you looking at me weird? Astros win yesterday and do it in interesting fashion. Easy to describe that way? Explain, Matthew. Step one. Tatsu Emi had some sort of blister on his finger that required. Bleeding all over the place.

Bleeding all over the place with just all sorts of napkins everywhere. towels, whatever they were using. Yeah. Then I thought, okay, he's going to go one and a... Is he on blood dinners? I don't know. But remember Joe, a spot, I said on this show yesterday, we need our gotta go five.

It's very important, he goes five. He was only four outs short of that. That's true, yeah. Quality start light didn't happen. That's what I was hoping for. That was my gut feeling. That was quality start barely got on the stove. That was raw meat.

That's what you would feed your dog. It was rare. So Emi finishes the inning. Yes. goes back out there still has terrible control, still being hit. Yeah. 80-something pitches over three and two-thirds. Not good.

Bullpen tacked severely. Yes. But yet, the Astros win. I like the everyday O'Kert nickname that people are putting out there. And by the way, massive shout out to Stephen Okard for using the bullpen cart. Yeah. So they did have it in Washington? Well, they used to have it in New York when I was growing up as a kid.

I thought they used to have it everywhere. They might have. But I just remember as a kid, Shea Stadium. had a pretty deep, you know, the alleys are where the bullpen in some stadiums are. Like the minute main part in a minute main. Dink and left field, that would be, that's the alley out there is where the opposing bullpen is. So it's a little bit of a jog. And so Stephen Ockert's like, you know what, I need to save all my energy because I'm being used every other day.

I mean, the guy's been used literally every other day. Yeah. He's got a finite amount of calories in his system. He's been used too much. If he keeps them off his feet for an additional, I don't know, how many steps would that be between centerfield and say, I was going to say 300, but you're probably closer right. Okay, so let's say 250. You split the difference there. No, you're probably right.

200 steps, that's energy saved. That's a less beat of sweat that he could use on the mouth. And it works. That's at least a pitch. Yeah. Every pitch matters with O'Kert. So if you think it's bad being an astro fan, I don't even know if there's national fans there.

I mean, it was like 82 degrees yesterday, a sunny, beautiful day in an nation's capital. There was nobody there, it felt like. Then you look at the box score. I don't know if this is with common knowledge is around sports or on people that follow baseball, but you know, the Astros outfields not particularly good offensive. In fact, it's been a hot mess. They're bottom five in every position in OPS.

So do you see what happened yesterday? Bryce Matthews drew a walk. Yes. Zach Desenzo drew two walks. Baller. Kim Smith drew two walks. Let's go. You.

the rule should be if you surrender a walk to an Astro outfield or you lose the game automatically. It's an auto lose situation. He should get to go to second. Yeah, it's a double penalty. I like that. I mean, that's God love the Astros for good pitch selection,

but that's embarrassing. Five walks among those three dudes. National pitching. Not so great. Bullpen, terrible. Yeah, everybody came out of the bullpen had an ERA over seven. It's like, wow, We thought we had it bad. Although the bullpen's been good, of course, for the Astros last month or so.

And thank you very much, Marlins. You fish beat the Seattle Mariners in extras last night. So the Astros find themselves two back in the American League West. And also something happened last night that had me very, very mega encouraged. And we'll find out what that is when we come back. When we come back. 713-212-5-790. 7-13-212-5-7-90.

11 o'clock, Brian Boga-Sevick. Shut your bum ass up at 1130. And I want to give you some more trials and tribulations about what my thoughts were about Texas Tech and the Big 12 over the last 36 hours, including, apparently the guy that we played the audio of yesterday is a massive Texas Tech goober. Oh, okay. You guys are 12 in Cincinnati. We're a victim over here in Texas Tech.

Goober. Okay. So you had a goober going up against a, as a conference commissioner is like, I don't have to answer your questions. Mm-hmm. You're Texas tech. All right.

So Ross says, give the tease against, let's let's really hold the audience here. It was very, very encouraged by something last night. Something Ross was very encouraged about. You'll hear about it next here on Sports Talk, 790.

So here's what got today. We have the Astros. We have a little bit of Dana Brown from earlier this morning. If you didn't miss that conversation with the boys, Chris and Dan. We also have,

for you. Apparently there was a meeting of the minds between Texas Tech and Big 12 at a steakhouse. Oh, really? Yeah. To let bygones be bygones. They go get that 72 ounce steak in Amarillo? You know, I've never been to Amarillo

just driven by, I've never actually been to Amarillo. I've been there by morning. And you, up from San Antonio last, yeah. And you went to that place, right? No, I didn't. I went to Amarillo, but I didn't go there. Okay. I was like, I'm not going to eat a 72-on steak. It's like 100-s-suff.

My guess is people just go there just to have the picture there, but they're not. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we got that to get to. We got Brian Bogussevich. We got to get to what else. Oh, we have a sports media, a sports media conversation we're going to have that relates to the World Cup involving the role of studio analyst to what they see. Because someone is getting raked over the coals and I'll give you a little further. Is it Barley Boyd?

For her criticism of the. USA's top player. Okay. And now, as promised, because we are a show that pays off on our teases, there was something that you found extremely encouraging yesterday from the local nine as the Astros beat the nationals. Six to three, Josh Hader with another save. He's 10 for 10.

He's 3 and O. And his Ernie is now, I think it's at 0.59? 0.59. It was 0.6 yesterday. He went down. He's sick. He's sick. He only got one out and he got a little hairy.

Well, yeah. He got a lot of hitting a walk, but that's okay. All right. So what was most encouraging? May I look at Lauren as you discussed this? Oh, I thought you were going to guess. I thought you were going to be engaged in the show. Oh, okay, I'll do it then. All right. So I know I'm guilty of not doing the same as well.

So let me think, is this going to be painfully obvious or is this a sly baseball? I thought, uh, it's not too sly. It's slightly inside baseball, but it's something everybody can recognize. I was going to say maybe all the walks of the bottom three drive. Okay. Um, no. Uh, did you see Mr. Brian Abraeuse's inning, man? Matthew.

Nine pitches, seven strikes. Let me give you the four-seem fastball velos. 98, 97.9, 98.8. Are you sure these aren't just artificial numbers? Somebody drew up. This is baseball savant, 95 and 96.8. Brian Abray, you humming up almost at 99. I haven't looked.

I don't know if I can find this easily. That's got to be the fastest pitch he's thrown all season long. It isn't even close because everything that we've noticed from all other places he's pitched, we're talking about one to two miles per hour down. Now you say, like the novice in me thought that was no big deal 10 years ago. Yeah. When you do it on a regular basis, it does become an issue. It's huge.

If he can get back humming up at 98, 99, being the pitcher that he was, I thought, I mean, I'd have left him for dead this season. If you get him back as an eighth inning guy with Josh Hader pitching the way that he has, and then the other guys you have, the Brian King's, look, and I like Brian King, but we kind of talked about this. Like, he's not going to come out there and hit, you know, two, three, four of a really, really good lineup and blow everyone away. The reality is this. And Brian King has saved this team's bacon on more than one occasion this year.

He's not an eighth inning guy. He's just not. Right. He throws 91, 92. That angle scare anybody. Now he's left-handed, which makes him crafty. Yeah, well, he's got reverse split, so he's good getting right. He's out.

But it's always good to have multiple left-handed arms in the bullpen. Dusty Baker didn't agree with that, but everybody else seems to. He's got a great sweeper, you know, I don't know, the arm angle. I think they, I can't remember if he, he's the one with like the really late release that they kind of fools people or whatever. He's crafty, like you said. Yeah. I want somebody who's come up there in the eighth inning, and they're going to blow everyone

off out of the batter's box. And that's Brian Abrae. and if he's hitting a 98-99 last night, that is hugely encouraging for me. Hugely. I'm going to use that word at least four times before the end of the show. By the way, shout out. We were talking about we're hugely in a lot of other cities.

Oklahoma City, we're also hugely. My friend John used to work with the Rockets many, many moons ago, listens to us up there every day. We're crushing there. Well, he got mad because I mentioned all these cities we've been broadcast from and we didn't bring up John. Okay. Shout out to John Oklahoma City.

Wonderful. All right. So here's what I did like. I love the fact that light hitting teams have guys that draw walks. Case in point. I love that Jose Al-Tube is this rollercoaster of a 2026 campaign. I mean, is there any other way to describe what he does offensively? OPS, back over 700.

Who told you? He was better than what he was hitting at. Me. Now, I also told you Jake Myers, but that's a different story for a different time. We're talking about Jose O'T. Well, somebody was bullish on Mike Burroughs, too. That's okay. We can have like a bullish on Burroughs night event at Dyncon at Consolation with the Jake Myers fan club.

Even in decline, Jose Altova is better than what he's shown us. And he is kind of in the later stages of his career. He's sold out more for power. And we're seeing that this year. And, you know, last three years, 20, 26 home runs. He's got 10 so far in 70 games this year. But he took him a while just to get to five. So he just had a little bit of a power surge the last few weeks.

I'm here for it. Look, me too. The base running hasn't been nearly as atrocious this year because frankly he had been on his base as much. I don't think he's killing you at second base. I've always believed this, and Ross has the numbers that back it up, so I can't argue. I haven't looked in a while.

But he doesn't kill you at second base. He just doesn't. Regardless of what the metrics tell me, now, a range, arm strength. There are still some plays he may have. One bad play over the weekend. Just one, but I mean, he gets so many opportunities. I mean, to me, he's not in the lead second baseman, but he's more than he gets as much saving grace for me as possible

because he is, first of all, putting him in left field was a disaster that wasn't going to be a long-term plan. Oh, now you're squinting. I ain't when you squint. What's wrong now? Nothing. Go ahead. I'm not going to tell you who's the worst second baseman

in terms of defensive run saved in baseball. I won't tell you. I won't tell you who's dead last at second base. I don't want to hear it. Okay. And I'm not going to hear it. I told you. I won't tell you.

I won't tell you who's... I won't tell you who's dead last in all of baseball. It rhymes with Bosae-Baltuvae. Okay. Can I talk to seeing I-Ross first? Okay. He's okay. Okay, that's all I'm asking for.

And thank you for saying that. I don't know. What's his fielding? What's his fielding percentage, Matt? I don't know. That used to be the only way you could judge people back in the day, Jonathan. Well, he's not committing errors, but it doesn't factor in the balls that he can't get to

because of his 35, 36 years old legs. He's 35, right? He's 36. He can be 41, I don't care. You can say at second base. If he wants to get his 3,000 hit, then walk off the field and say, adios, see you later. I'm all good.

It's going to take him a while. Oh, yeah, he's 36 now. He turned 36 last month. Can you give me the hit total? Is that too much to ask for this? His hit total right now? 63. 63 and 70 games.

Remember, he missed some time with the oblique injury. But, I mean, I'm talking about all. Oh, all time. 24-51. God Almighty, that is, oh, we're going to get a lockout. Do you remember him for what he was? Is there such thing as a 2854 hit club? He's such a one in a billion, man.

So special. And then a great human being on top of it. Awesome. You know what he is? I'll say this. He's one in a billion. He's not gregarious. He's not going to, again, I don't know him personally at all.

But, I mean, I've covered him enough over the years. I mean, he's been around since 2000. I mean, he's basically, he's been as long as I've been back in town the second time around. He's, there's not a person that says, what an a-hole. Like, you and I get chaos called A-holes on Twitter all the time. I'm probably meaning more than you, but that's a different issue at different time. Yeah, you yell at people more than I do. I do.

But people expect that from me and they need it from me. We do, Matt. Nobody, everybody likes Hose-L-Tuv. If you went to the All-Star game next week in Philadelphia And you said Give me some thoughts about wholesale out of Tube Everybody but the Dodgers would say

He's the swellest guy on Earth Everybody said, Codes Bellinger He stole the MVP, bro Yeah, man What's up? Is that what Cody Bellinger sounds like? Yeah, man, he stole the MVP I don't know, probably

We should play how close was that? We could find some Cody Bellinger audio Somewhere on YouTube, right? It wouldn't be difficult. Mm-hmm. But you basically... Luke Keishel's lower on outs above average than Al-Tuva at second base, so that's good. Okay.

Al-Tuvei second to last and outs above average at minus five. It means he's five outs worth than average, and he's minus 10 defensive runs saved, which is worst among second baseman in only 67 games. Hey, Jazz Chisb's way down here. Apparently, Jazz Chishol's terrible. And Luke Keishel is terrible at defensive run saved, too. So Luke Keishel and Jose Altuvee, we're second baseman.

According to these metrics, Matt. But the Matalytic say he's good. Matt Oedillivoc says he can be the second basement for the Astros as long as he wants. He can be, I mean, there's nowhere else to pull him. That Auburnalianz. That D.H spot is taken, unfortunately. Oh, yeah. And watching him in the left field, that made me feel bad.

Because it wasn't necessarily his inability to catch the ball, but everybody was running on him because the arms is not there. That was more painful than anything else. I know. All right. So there's your little Astro update for the day. Matter of fact, we're going to hear from Dana Brown coming back if you missed him an hour ago. Okay.

Because Gordon runs in and says, man, he says, this stuff is so good today. I'm like, well, let's find out. Let's go. Let's find out how good, what kind of questionnaire person, what kind of interviewer Chris Gordy is when it comes to Dana Brown? There are a couple of cuts from him coming back. If you'd like to join our radio program, 713-212-5-790, 7-13-212-5-790. If you want to visit with us through Twitter, you may do that as well. As long as you're nice.

at SportsMT at SportsRV and on Instagram as well at SportsMT at SportsRV you're chuckling about something over there Oh, just Do you see this Paul Skeens quote Ryan O'Hern Three Home Runs 10 runs batted in

Paul Skins goes, I think it's kind of selfish to be honest Everybody else is getting on Home runs are rally killers You hit a three run home run or a grand slam What now? There's nobody on Nobody can drive him in. Good for him, I guess.

It's pretty funny. By the way, do me a favor because I don't want to take this out of context but we were talking about some of the stuff that Carly Lloyd was getting criticized for did Christian Polisic say that now even though with a team being out he can rest now

did he say something to that I didn't see that and you gotta be you gotta be careful these days because everybody's putting up these like fake quotes that's what I'm saying I wanted to make sure before we wrote this is from Fox News all right must be true then well unless they're getting sued for

is reporting stuff. What did he say? Hold on. They're asking me to allow ads on Fox News and that's not happening. So I'm not clicking it. Sorry. We'll get it when we get back. Yeah. Look at this guy.

So is there audio of this? Sorry, I'm not letting you show me the ads. Ads are everything. Ads are a huge part of this business. And we love, appreciate all of our sports talk, 790 sponsors. That's because we recommend great places that we do. 713-212-5-790. All right, now a little bit of Dana Brown from this morning.

We're going to get into Texas Tech and the Big 12 in the next segment after this. And then back to baseball at 11 o'clock with our friend, Brian Bogusivik, of A of A, ATT, of Space City Home Network. And again, if you'd like to join us, you may do so at 713212-5-790. 7-1-3-212-5-7-90. There could be somebody starting in the finale on Sunday against the Rangers in Arlington. Let's ask Dana who that could be. Yeah, good chance. Javier could fill in for Burroughs, you know,

but sending Burroughs back to AAA. So we have him as an option. We may give him, you know, an inning in the next day or so, and maybe potentially he could start on Sunday to get him back in a rotation. So we're having those kind of conversations. He potentially could be an option for Sunday, you know. But, yeah, we still see him as a starter. You know, we're working through this.

We're having good baseball conversations. And, you know, the main thing for us is we have to keep a stable rotation. When we get good starts, this team is really good. And so, you know, so it's getting to the point in the season where we have to lock them down and we have to give ourselves a chance to win. Options. This is good news? I'm a little confused.

Okay. Because, and I don't want to put words in the mouth. So let's, we're going to go back a previous way. week. And I'm throwing you a little bit of a curball here, Jonathan. I want you to go back to July 5th. Dana Brown number five. Okay. I see what it's, as we call it in the business, slugged or labeled as. It says decision to put Javier in Penn. Now, when I first heard this, I thought it was that's the call because we need to keep him in the bullpen. Now, you can't forecast Mike Burrell struggles

and obviously in the motion to put the bullpen. But the thing I brought up with you earlier this week is, I don't think you need to be using Christian Javier as a rubber band either. So this is from Sunday. This is from Sunday. He has a normal conversation with Robert Ford on Sundays. This is the decision to put Javier in the pen again July 5th.

Yeah, simply because we have some moving pieces in our rotation. You know, we're really locking in on Burroughs and, you know, his starts and, you know, what we could do to get him better, you know, when you have guys like Blanco coming back, you know, you have to think about that, you have West Neschi coming back, you have Javier who's pitched out of the pen, you know, in the postseason before, and so he understands that, knows what that's all about. He gave us two really good innings last night, kept the game at bay, gave us a chance to, you know, come back and win it.

So having a guy like that who can start or go to the pen as he's shown in the post in the past, that's a valuable guy to have. And so we felt like, you know, we would be confident sticking him in the pen if we had to and we feel good about him being in the rotation. So we're going to try to do whatever's best for this team. And, you know, we're not saying it's not going to start the rest of the year. But we are saying that we want all of our best pieces with this club so that we can run off, get on a run. That's consistent.

That's good. And that's what I'm saying. Instead of us assuming what I thought of heard of, he's a bullpen guy, we played the audio, so that's fair. That was fair for us to play that. And back that, and he did not commit to Christian being a bullpen guy the rest of the year. So there you have it on that. Okay, another guy, let's go back to our regular format here.

Another guy that might see some time on Sunday is a guy who's been gone for a long time. His name is Ronell Blanco. You know, Blanco potentially, you know, could get back into this rotation. soon after, you know, you all start break. There's an outside chance we would consider him for Sunday as a starter. That's just an outside chance, but those are some of the discussions we're having, but make no mistake, you know, we feel good about him. All right, there you go.

All right. So we've got options. Here's how good they are. We've got options. Uh-huh. We don't love them. They all have their, not necessarily warts, but there's no full-proof. this guy steps in and here we go.

And the reality is this, if you're going to make a move at the deadline, and everybody wants to argue about this, and it's a point, it's a good argument. Like, Dale, I was listening to Dan this morning, he thinks the number one thing the Astrosine is starting pitching.

To me, it's outfield power. It's outfield bats. Way more. I am, and look, they're all nice young men, and they're all trying, and they're all been giving their go, but there isn't a group of guys out there

that I'm like, you know what, let's get this guy six days a week in left field. You need a left-handed, not necessarily power hitting, but something that would possess some sort of slug that you are not getting from Desenzo, Cole, Loperfeito, Tremel, Wade. I mean, how much further about to go here. Yeah, I think there's some nuance to that discussion that we can have at some point. But, yeah, both are needs, obviously.

But it's... I guess to go, didn't we make the spades analogy like a month ago? Like, you have a bunch of like, yeah, jack of hearts, queen hearts, maybe I can win one. You got a two spades, maybe a two spades, I can steal one. Since we're all spades players, I think we brought this up before. When you're talking across the table, we're looking at our, we're looking at our rotation. We're looking at our hand.

My daughter, when we play spades, does not allow me to say two in a possible. I know. Well, she doesn't know it. It's fine. You say possible, right? I've heard of it. I don't say it, but I've heard of it. Okay. So I would say the Astros rotation is...

I was thinking, one in a possible or two in a possible. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. So you have options. You have cards to play, but how good are these cards? Can you win with a jacket clubs? We can win with Rinal Blanco, but are we feeling a little shaky? We could also lose. That's what you might?

You mind going less than four. My goodness. And the high pitch count again. His nails are falling off. What did you say, Jonathan? Can we talk about this when we come back? Because I think he has plenty of time to adjust now. I don't know what it is.

Save this. And I also, we also want to talk, I want to delve into the Astro's most pressing need for the deadline. Okay, we got that. Boys, we got three hours and 15 minutes here. Let's go. Let's space this out. I do want to get a little bit of this Texas Tech Big 12 steakhouse dinner.

Okay. We have to talk about what they ate. Uh-huh. Who picked up the tab? Uh-huh. And is Brett Your Mark a good tipper? By the way, people are crushing the Big 12's deal with Ronster Renner Regi. Are you okay?

Yes, I am. Saying that they got the deal that Ronster got it for a really cheap deal. And I'm going to dispute that a little bit. Okay. Good. Because I have no context. I don't either. Somebody write this down.

What I'm going to guess. Renergy. Okay. Benergy. Deadline needs. Deadline needs. Spades. And Jonathan is upset at EMI.

At EMI's adjustment time. Yes. Okay. Like, we all have adjustment time. You know, every time he goes in a new ballpark, we need to go against EMI. Well, but this one, when I lived in Minnesota, it took me two years for people to like me there. Really? Yeah.

Because they don't like outsiders. Minnesotans do not like people from outside of Minnesota. So you had to start talking like this. see? No, that's exactly What the Vikings, yeah? That's exactly what you don't do. Come over to my place

for Ludafisk on Saturday, go Vikings. And then they started liking you. I'm like, damn, me, y'all are a tough market. And then when I decided I'm moving back, like, no, don't go. I'm like, oh. Like, okay.

That's hard, that's, that's with any radio market. You go somewhere. Like, if you were to be Omaha sports leader. Mm-hmm. They would hate you in Cornhus. I talk about how great Jake Myers is is and we'd be good. And Bryce Matthews.

By the way, really fast. I know we're late. Sorry, Jonathan. You have failed miserably in your Jake Myers fan club president responsibility. I was out of town this weekend. I'm sorry. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. What do you mean? He had a tour and Homer last night. Oh, I didn't even know that.

See? You know what? I was locked in on World Cup. You're impeached. I mean, oh, stop. You can't impeach me. You're not even in the club. I'm on the other side of the aisle on this one, and I'm impeaching you. 1045 on Sports Talk 7 out of you. So, if you listened to show yesterday, first of all, thank you.

doing that. Secondly, we played the audio of the guy from Lubbock that went after Brett Yormark. Yeah. And he wrote his stuff down. And he's not this independent journalist. He is a Texas Tech honk that works in Lubbock. And as I met before, I said before, and it happens here. I mean, people could say, I can be a honk for you of H. And I'm okay with that. But I don't, but, but it's different. When you, if you were, if you were, what's a good example? Kentucky Sports Radio. I don't... Okay.

They are super biased towards Kentucky sports, correct? Our friends at In College Station at the 12thman.com or Aggie Radio, whatever the hell. Texags? Techsags. They're not right down the middle. I remember we played the audio of the A&M? They were predicting A&M versus Miami and all of them pick A&M to win. Yeah, I don't think any of them has ever picked against A&M in any game ever.

No matter what the case of me. Why would you? Yeah, so... You know, I got the Aggies winning this one, Matt. And this is no surprise. Polk's radio and Stillwater is not going to necessarily... Right. So every small...

We picked the Astros to make playoffs every year and they don't. Yeah. I think I had him in... I had about 106 wins this year. I have been 114 in Swimming the Dodgers in a World Series. Yeah, me too. Wink, wink. Point being is that small towns,

smaller college towns are going to, first of all, probably be littered with graduates of that school. Yes. On the year. And Homer. Yeah. Complete 100%

bias towards it. Yeah. So this guy... Syracuse alums and Lubbock, you're saying. I like Lubbock, so don't put me in this spot.

I'm just asking you a question. So one of our sales reps, Grant, big listen to the show. Yes? Came up to me this morning before the show story. He says, God, that guy... And I don't know what the dude's name is,

but he... Something Dylan. Yeah, he embarrassed us. Okay. So he was even embarrassed. He was embarrassed. Okay. Because the guy asked... So some tech fans do have some shame.

Some shame. So that was point one, was that that whole thing looked. queasy from a variety of angles. Homeboy reading his question twice, not looking for purely objective. He was looking

for a gotcha moment. In Brent Yormark basically saying this was not the place in time to talk about the brain and surgery situation, which it was exactly the place in time. Nip in the bud, get it over with. Now it's going to be extended for weeks and weeks for weeks because Brett Your Mark has never said anything officially. So that's

issue number one. Issue number two is apparently in Fort Worth, Brett Your Mark and key leaders of the Big 12 met with key leaders of Texas Tech in order to perhaps men fences. Well, the reconciliation process during this dinner was considered by a reporter from Fort Worth saying, actually Ross Dellinger said it, quote unquote, tough reconciliation process. And it remains ongoing. Meaning everybody still piss at everybody here.

Texas Tech wanted the Big 12's back. The Big 12's like, what are you doing making us look bad on this? So they're just going to have to get over it. Because Texas Tech, nobody wants Texas Tech, and the Big 12 needs Texas Tech. As a member of the Big 12 school, I want Texas Tech in my league.

I think it's good for the league. I agree. And Texas Tech going to the ACC does nothing for anybody. You're not going to get significantly, The ACC is not going to get more television money because Lubbock is now West Texas. That ain't going to do anything. Yeah. You would have a travel partner with SMU, but SMU doesn't move the needle for the ACCC.

It just doesn't. These were just schools grabbing on the spot so they could say they're powerful. So my advice to Texas Tech is get over it. My advice to the Big 12 is get over it. Let's get some kumbaya going here. And let's move forward. Today, the NCAA, ironically enough, for part three of this conversation, has sent finally a letter of inquiry to the University of Cincinnati. Oh, finally.

Part of the reason why that Texas Tech Homer Reporter was so mad is because they're like, wait a minute, why are you coming after us? He hadn't played it down for us. Meanwhile, he's making all these bets while wearing Cincinnati bear cat gear. So in Texas Tech's response, I kind of understand why they were kind of pissed. Uh-huh. So that's the latest on that saga. NCAA coming after Cincinnati, what are they going to do? What are they going to do, really?

He's already gone. You can penalize, what are you going to do? Probationary period? I mean, what is, what is NCAA going to say? You shouldn't have done that. You should have been more closer watching what your players are doing. It could happen in any school. So I don't know.

It seems like a kind of a hollow conversation at this point. What does it mean? Is the NCAA going to ban the bearcats? No. From playing the Independence Bowl? Yeah. Come on. I don't know.

I don't know what kind of reprimands there could be. Maybe vacating of wins, maybe? What does that mean for anybody? Yeah, I mean, it's just something the NCAA does. Yeah. But it never means anything because you were at the game. You're like, oh, that was great. Yeah, I know.

But the bottom line is that Brett Yormark and Texas Tech executives tried to have dinner. They didn't leave a conversation. station arm and arm hugging each other. They didn't sing kumbaya around the fire. They did not. That's a shame. And again, if Texas Tech wants to go to the ACC, good luck with that.

And frankly, you can't, if Texas Tech was to leave the Big 12, what are you going to replace that with? San Diego State? It doesn't do anything for anybody. UNLV doesn't do anything for anybody? No. So just,

as the words we would say 30 minutes from now, Shut your bummasses up. Seriously. All right, Brian Bogusevic to get in some little more baseball chatter. This is the Matt Thomas show with Ross.

We enjoy our Wednesday visits with Brian Bogusevick of Space City Home Network, of course, the former Astro, and on hand to watch in person at Dikin Park and certainly from the studios on the road

as the Astros even up the series with the Nationals. From a macro viewpoint, Brian, say what you all about where this team is and still chasing 500. To be able to put together a stretch of about a month where they've lost one series,

let's give them some flowers here because they've done to do that the last few weeks. Yeah, it's been an pretty incredible turnaround from where it was the first six weeks of the season and what it's been for the last six weeks or so. And the craziest thing to me is just how kind of methodable and consistent it's been. I mean, I think over the last 20,

or something, you know, the record's like 13 and 7 or 12 and 8 or something. And there haven't been any kind of winning streets, losing streets. It's just been like two out of three, two out of three, two out of three. And that's kind of been what they've been talking about all season. You know, if we win series, we win series, we'll end up where we are. And it, and it, you know, has proven that way, not just from a record standpoint, but it's proven that way from a how are we playing standpoint because it has been pretty consistent. Even when they have a bad game here or there, it seems like they turn the page really quickly and get back to playing good baseball. And the reality is this is the way the American League is slated this year,

especially the West, you don't have to win 9 of 11. You can take these series and get right back in the race. And that's exactly what they're doing. I thought yesterday's game was bizarre for many reasons. One, if I'm the nationals, I'm not happy that I walked as many people that I did from the Astro side of things, especially with guys in the outfield who have really struggled to have a consistent bat. That, to me, was one of the underlying thoughts of the game yesterday was the ability

to take some pitches and get on the base paths without having to swing and make contact with the baseball. No, absolutely. Every rally any of the Astros had was basically handed to them with a couple of base runners from walks and hit by pitches. But that's been the season for the nationals. If you look at them, they've got one of the best, arguably the best offense in all of baseball. They score a ton of runs. They hit a ton of home runs. They steal a ton of bases. They do all these great things offensively. and the pitching is basically the complete opposite. They walk everybody. They give up a ton of runs, and that's why you have a team that's got maybe the best office in baseball,

and they're just kind of struggling to stay around 500. But, you know, kudos to the Astros because they took advantage of it, and it wasn't a couple of walks at the bottom, and then here's Yorda, and three-run Homer. It was the guys at the bottom of the order getting it done and getting those runners in and executing at bats and, you know, sacrifice flies, productive outs. They kind of grinded out six runs yesterday.

So, Emi gets into trouble in the first inning with the bloody blister, whatever that was, and couldn't get you four, and Burroughs get sent down. And, you know, Araggeti had two good months, one lousy month, and hopefully July is a turnaround for him as well. There's a lot of it that Ross and I just shake our heads at daily, and I'm sure you do the same thing. How is the team where it is with the fact that starting pitching? Macro view of this is an underperforming starting five or in some case starting six? Yep, because they've been pretty consistently very good everywhere else. You know, the bullpen has been great for a huge chunk of the season now, and they continue to get better and deeper down there.

The offense, you know, they had some ups and downs early, but they've really leveled off into being a pretty good offense, certainly when you have Jordan going out of his mind for an entire season that helps. They've been generally good on the basis. They've been generally good defensively, And they've kind of covered up for the fact that the same pitching has been inconsistent at best and at times has been, you know, kind of detrimental. But I think once you get an idea of what you are as a team and know what you can rely in and what you have to cover up for, you can play a certain style of game. And you did it yesterday.

I mean, that was a pretty quick hook on in my, I know that pitch count was running up there, but he's good to go to 100 plus pitches and to get him. them out there in the low 80s. It was kind of like, okay, we've seen enough. Let's get it to the guys who we trust, who we can count on to kind of lock this thing down. So I think from the, you know, at the very least, you know what you have around that starting pitching now as you wait for it to maybe get a little bit better with some guys getting healthy.

What went wrong with Mike Burroughs? Because, I mean, even if you look at his last year, his numbers with the pirates, okay, 394 ERA, his whip was like 1.24. The thinking was, Elif is, if he's that, it was a decent trade, and he should be better here, but he's been much, much worse. Yeah, something doesn't add up with him, right?

If you make the Mike Burroughs scouting report, you put it down on paper, and you just kind of watch his pitches on video, say, without the hitter or the result, you would say that's pretty good stuff, that's doable, that stuff is going to work. I mean, fastball velocity, the change of the movement on the breaking balls.

But it's been very hitable. And the last couple of outings that he had, there has not been very much swing and miss at all. There hasn't been, you know, uncomfortable swings. There haven't been the ability to get away with the mistake. Anything he throws in the middle of the plate gets hammered. He makes a good pitch down below the zone. And guys still put a good swing on that.

And to me, from a hitter standpoint, that is all the signs of just they see the ball really well off of him. And they've got a long time to see it. They've got a long time to recognize. And they're always putting good swings on it. And there's always got to be some element of deception in a pitcher's delivery, hiding the ball a little bit, not seeing it right out of the hand. And he's tinkered with his mechanics quite a bit over the course of the season.

He's talked about different arm slots. He's talked about landing more open or more closed. And when you start doing that, especially with your landing and kind of swinging your leg open and closed, you always risk opening up a little bit earlier and showing. the ball earlier to hitters. And I think going down to AAA, working on some of those things and finding out where he needs to be from a directional standpoint, hopefully he can find a little bit more of deception because he's not getting the kinds of swings that he should based on what the stuff

out of the hand is. So I think he's just lost a little bit of deception as well as, you know, had some command issues also. Brian Bogussevick with us here on Sports Talk 790. last night Brian Brayew hitting 98.8 on the gun a couple other fast balls at 98. Obviously, if the Astros are going to make a run, it would be nice for him to be a big part of it. Apart from the velocity, what did you see from him? Well, it was the velocity and it was the shape of the breaking ball.

It was big. It was hard. It was more down than side to side, which is always a good sign. For him, I thought it was maybe one of the better outings that he's had all season. And, you know, the fastball, the velocity, it wasn't just like one or two pitches that popped. It was pretty consistent throughout the outing. So I don't know. You're not going to sit here and say, oh, he's back because he threw a pitch 99 miles an hour. But I certainly think that it's a huge step in the right direction. We'll see if he, you know, hopefully he gets run out there again today

and it looks the same and he can string together some outings. But even if he doesn't get all the way back to, you know, maybe best set up man in all of baseball, what he was. If he can just be a guy that you can rely on to throw a leverage inning or a seventh inning here or be a bridge in the sixth inning there, I think that would be a huge gain based off of what it was for the majority of the first half. Bogie, was the Jake Myers send down a wake-up call? Maybe wake-up call is a strange term, but I'll go with it anyway. For everybody, not just Jake, but nobody's safe in that waiver wire and that shuttle between Sugarland and Diken Park and happened almost. on a daily basis. Yeah, I don't know if there's a wake-up call because everybody, everybody's very aware of what this

business is and it's very, you know, what have you done for me lately? And it's very much in the now. But yeah, it's just a little reminder of the game moves forward and teams move forward. And, you know, if you're not producing or if you go through a stretch where you're struggling, nothing is really safe. And I think we saw that, you know, with Jake being sent down, I think we saw that with Christian Javier coming off of the aisle and being put, you know, directly into the bullpen. We'll see if he gets back into the rotation or not.

But, you know, it's that time of the season where it's getting late, right? We're past the 90 game point and tough decisions have to be made and we have to make decisions in the now and what can help us immediately. So, yeah, it's just kind of a little heightened sense of awareness that we're getting to that point of the season. You know, I don't like the trade deadline even being pushed back a couple of days further. And I know the reason why they do that is because they want to keep as many teams vested in maybe thinking about making a deadline. But if you're going to do something here and nothing really is going to happen until probably the last week or so, whoever you're inheriting better make an immediate impact, whether it's a starting pitcher, a reliever, going to get an outfielder, a left-handed bat up some sort.

Your sample size to make an impact for a team is now down to less than two months. Yeah, it's tough because especially when you're adding on the position player side because I mean, everybody throughout the course of the season has a rough spell of a couple weeks or so. And when that's all you're really getting, it can really diminish the return on going out and getting somebody. So I think also one of the things that you have to look at when you're scouting players and thinking about bringing somebody in, it isn't just, hey, this is what this guy has been in 2026 and these are his overall numbers. It's really a, here's how he's swinging it right now or here's how he's throwing it right now and trying to capitalize on bringing in not just a quality bat or a quality arm,

but maybe a hot bat also. Last question, and you're, you know, people are trying to bring up trade possibilities. You know, the Astros farm system and doesn't have as much as, say, many other teams, unfortunately, it's been considered bottom five for a while. from a minor league perspective and Brian you were obviously spent time in my leagues before becoming a major leaguer do the young men of 19, 20,

21 years old that are just looking to get that call to the show do they hear their names being brought up in trade speculation and what is that perspective because we always hear about the player on a major league roster but you know like Moniak being for example for the Rockies being a name but brought up what are the minor league kids

thinking about at this point in time oh yeah very very aware Very aware. I would say, you know, sometimes they're more aware of it down there than the guys in the big league clubhouses. And, you know, a lot of times what they are is they're looking for opportunities. And, you know, if your name is coming up as somebody who could potentially be traded, usually that is a good thing, right? It's not that your old team did not want you anymore. It's that somebody else thinks you have value. And if you're a player being brought in, whether you're an A ball or double A or whatever, that new organization is. now highly invested in your success. So yeah, those guys are very aware of it. And not that anybody wants to get traded, but, you know, everybody in any industry, any job type of situation is looking for opportunities somewhere. We'll leave it that. Friend, look forward to seeing you on TV tonight. Thank you for the visit as always. And we will talk with you. What are you doing next week? Are you doing anything for the All-Star Break? Or what are you doing? I'm going to be out in the

hill country sitting floating on a river somewhere. All right. Then we're going to, we'll give you And we're going to give you next Wednesday off. Is that what you want or do you want to hang out with us? It's up to you. I don't know that I don't know that I will be of any use to you. Well, you know what? Then we will talk. From the river.

That would better. My daughter's on the river right now as we speak. Okay. I'm a little nervous about that. But yeah, Brian, enjoy the river next week and we'll talk to you in two weeks here on 790. Thanks for the time as always. All right. See you guys.

Brian Bogus Semik with us here on the program. Yeah, good stuff. I mean, he just gives us a nice perspective on things that we don't get because he's been in those battles. But it is right. It's no wake-up call. Everybody, Taylor Tremel, Wade, Descenzo, Cole,

Bryce, Matthews, Ross, they all know. They ain't get the job done. Jake's hitting home runs in AAA. He's ready. He's hitting the lab. He's hitting the cages. I told you his heater's coming.

He said and tell you at what ballpark. You should have said he's got a professional baseball heater coming. Yes, professional baseball. That's exactly right. I didn't say not with the Astros. Yeah, you could have said Asheville. Tourists, too. That would have been definitely been really good. I think you could rate down there.

All right. Shut your bum ass up coming up in a half in about 15 minutes. Our buddy, Sean Dillon from the Lovick, put a tweet out a little while ago, defending his actions at the Big 12 Media Days. Wonderful. And he's not allowing replies. Weak sauce. But you can still quote tweet him, so he'll see it. 713-212-5-790. 7-13-212-5-7-90. 1120 a.m. here on Sports Talk 7.90, the Matt Thomas show with Ross.

Thanks to Brian Bogussevich for joining us with some good Astros conversation. As they got the victory yesterday against the Washington Nationals going for another rubber game as they try to get the win Spencer Erigetti on the hill against Foster Griffin, who's been pretty good for the Washington Nationals this year. That'll be a 545 first pitch coming. your way later tonight here on Sports Talk 790 and I will be with you for the Astros 10th inning show. I would like all games to start at 545 local time. It's not bad. Now, I'm not mad about it. It's 6.45. The 9 to 5 working man might disagree with us. Yeah, 645 in the east for that

game today. But you got ribs and jumbalaya? Leftovers. By the way, the rib is from Ray Reh. Reh. Their barbecue. And they'll be a topic of today's edition of Shut your bum ass up. Anybody got time for that. Okay. free store barbecue. Look, in Kingwood, we have one barbecue restaurant in the very front. Uh-huh. The front? You know, when you get off the 59.

Off the freeway? Off the freeway, yeah. I'm trying to get a handle on the proper Kingwood nomenclature. All right, as I was saying, and then there's only one other place in Kingwood for barbecue, and it's at the grocery store, and it's not bad. I mean, it's really, I mean, look, my palette for barbecue is different than my kids and my wife. Yeah, buy your live.

I didn't say anything. I'm speaking. I'm not speaking. Good, you're not. Getting all choked up over there. I'm fine. Point being is it's delicious, but I want to know if I'm able to tell them to shut their bum ass up based on the price I paid for it. Probably. Problem is, it used to be back in my name, Matthew, you, brisket was the cheap meat.

You go smoke it, you got it at 99 cents a pound or less, and then you would smoke it for 12 to 6. Because you have to cook it for 12 to 13 hours. that's labor. It was supposed to be the cheap meat. Now it gets popular, and now it's all overpriced. Same thing as like inside skirt steak. So again,

when I tell you what I paid for, you can tell you to shut their bum ass up or tell them to shut their bum ass up because I've already made the decision I'm not paying this ever again. How much is a brisket a pound? Is it prime? No, I'm talking...

Sounds like $6.99 a pound for a pound of primes. They cooked it for us. Why, no, they cook it? How much does the meat per piece? pound that they cook. I'm going to give you the entire order with the sides and everything. Okay. I just want to know that they're per pound because normally these nice places, it's like

35 bucks a pound for Brisket. I think I paid one pound. No, I can't even tell you, but I just I was just pissed off something. Now you get me all I went to Terry Blackson Austin. It was 40 bucks person. What? Is that good or no? I got barely got any meat.

Got like what, literally one rib. It was like, what was that movie Chris what? Was it, I'm going to get you sucker? What a half much for one rib? That's how I was. At Terry Blacks. Yeah, well, I don't have the itemized report, but I have the complete order for you, so we'll tell you about that.

All right, anything that Brian Bogusific wanted to talk to you, anything tickle your fancy with his conversation? I thought it was interesting about the, I mean, the Mike Burroughs thing, it's just so I mean, like I was kind of telling him, when we saw the trade, like ooh, 394 ERA, okay,

that's fine, that's doable, 23-star, 23 appearances, 19 starts. Right. And you're going to get him here. He's going to be at the very least, at least that good, or if not even better. And he's been way worse. Way worse. Let me give you a generic statement.

This is from a baseball. What he said makes sense. Yeah, just on what your question. What he said makes sense is that they can see his, they can see the ball out of his hand or something. Because he's not fooling. And that would lead to a lot of home runs like he's giving up. We were conversing with some friends about the other day. They see what the Astros saw in Tatsu.

at EMI. They aren't, they be my group of friends, aren't seeing what they saw Mike Burroughs. We're not baseball trained eyes. But when EMI is good, that slaughter is filthy, he can dot the fastball. Has Burroughs ever been filthy since he's been an astro? In spring training. I'm not counting. I know. You can't count on either. You said, I know. I'm just answer your question. Fine. The seven inning, the seven inning shutout started against Cincinnati. He had six innings and one

re-ball, like as, I think Bogey laid it out perfectly. If you're just looking at the stuff, if he's throwing a bullpen, you're like, damn, that's nasty. This looks good. There hasn't been a moment in my mind. I've seen solid. I've seen good. Yeah.

They must be seeing the ball out of his hand like Bogie saying. That makes perfect sense to me. Well, then you know what you do? You go to the AAA, you get that fixed. You got to do something because like he's been moving all around the rubber left side, middle, whatever, to try to hide the ball as long as possible.

But whatever he's doing is not working, it's making him uncomfortable. It's part of it's funny, I don't know if it's delivery, makes an adjustment either too. Josh Hader, you know when he rocks that right leg in the ear, he torts his body to the left, that ball stays in his hand longer than the

average pitcher does. And when you have electric stuff, Now, granted, Josh Hader's arms is nothing close to what Mike Burroughs is, but hiding it as long as you can, so it gives the batter even less of an opportunity to guess can make a difference. Yeah, and then Channel Room like a month ago did that big article on Mike Burroughs arm slot and release point being a lot different than last year as well. So he's got stuff to tinker with. So maybe there is some hope, but right now you don't need hope.

You need wins. Because look, you have a serious financial implication and attachment to Tatsu Yemi. You don't have it with Mike Burroughs. You just don't. If he's bad this year, you just keep him in AAA the rest of the year and you say, you'll try this again in 2027 or 2028 when they come back and play. Look who's going to talk about a little, some Ritch Rhee Ribs? Stunna, what do you got today, Stunner?

We don't need any wins. Because look, you have a serious financial implication. We're a full minute behind, Suna. We'll try that again. We're, hi, we broadcast on a delay. And we have since, I believe, I've been in a radio 35 years since day one. Forever. Yeah.

So we appreciate you, Stunna. Thank you, Suna for listening. We sound great, by the way. Man, it was like stereo. Damn, it was entertaining. Jonathan, I didn't realize our voices were so sexy. You know what? What?

Go to break. I'll give credit when credits do. Oh, there we go. That's my boy right there. Do you want to try them one more time or you want to go next segment? We'll wait for the next segment. We'll wait for next segment. Ain't nobody getting time?

Ain't nobody getting time for that? Hey nobody getting time for that. All right, here we go. 713, 212.1257.9. If something's matter with you, do you want to let it out? Let's go. 713, 2125.7.9. All right, Ross, I need a ruling.

Here we go. Okay. Pound of fatty brisket. Okay. You went with the moist. Correct. I don't like that word. I mean, they call it the moist brisket.

What do you want me to do? No, they call it fatty. Oh, really? Yeah. That's moist, too. Tomato. You're moist and lean. Half rack of ribs.

Okay? Six ribs. And these are St. Louis? Or St. Louis spare? Or baby bag? I don't know. I'm eating a rib right now. It looks like a St. Louis spare.

Look at my rib. All right. By the way, everything's delicious. So far. Got a quart of cream corn. Okay. Got a half quart of potato salad. Wait, how much brisket?

One pound. Okay. Okay. Okay. Cooked, prepared. Got pickles, got onions, got white bread. I had to go do my own sauce, which is fine. I don't mind doing that.

What do you mean do your own sauce? The little push thing that you push down the sauce. Uh-huh. That was to go order. Mm-hmm. Okay. The actual retail price of said meal was? $81. 73.

Damn it. I almost said 75 and then I went over because it's... Damn it. As you know, Mr. Texas loves barbecue. It's too expensive. And I'm not just pointing out Ray 3-Rearia. I'm sure that restaurants are charging crazy prices for it. Barbecue Ross is delicious. It's just too expensive.

So the barbecue industry, whatever that is? I'm going to blame the beef industry. Okay, beef industry. We're going to talk about this. Ain't nobody got time for seven. $74 for a rack of ribs, half rack of ribs, a pound of fatty brisket, a quart of one side, and a half a quarter of other. You know, I got time for that. The problem is the beef market because I understand, I pay a premium for very good brisket because it's hard work.

You got to start the fire. You got to keep the fire at a temperature. Sorry. You have to, I mean, they have to watch all the briskets. It's a 24-hour job. So I don't mind paying a little extra premium for brisket. The problem is, is the beef markets have gotten insane. The brisket prices have shot way up.

And unfortunately, that cost has to get paid down to us. Because I don't mind paying for some arts and craft of this brisket, which it is an art. It is so difficult to make a good. Our ribs is an art. Absolutely. All of it's an art. But the brisket is what's really gone up. That's what's really gotten crazy.

To where you have these guys who are watching, you know, these barbecue restaurants, they're watching the fires 24 hours a day and bending over backwards doing all this stuff. It takes 16 hours of labor. The court of the side, you know, I got two sides. The court was $14 for a quart of a side. For a cream corn? Cream corn. That's all much.

Okay, you got screwed there. The half quart of potato salad was $8. Yeah. So I'm $23 into sides. So it used to be like $20. pounds of brisket. Sorry, Jonathan, everything's going to hell. And then now it's like 25, 30, and now it's like a lot of these nice places,

$34, $35 for a pound of brisket. So the problem is this. I understand food costs are growing up. Everybody's restaurants, you're just going to lose me. I didn't enjoy it as much as I should have because I just paid way too much more. There is going to be a squeeze and there is going to be

a bubble and I think you're already seeing a lot of places that are really good, like even top 50 joints struggling more than they would 10 years ago. Okay. So I would say, Nobody got time. It's a tough business for high-priced barbecue. And the market is more splintered because, I mean, everybody, not everybody, but more people are really good at making brisket. So it's even harder to open up a shop right now.

Yep. Thank you very much for that. Allow me to do us spot off. Anybody got time for these beef prices. Exactly. Hey nobody got time for that. It's supposed to be the cheap, nasty piece of the meat. They're supposed to have something cheap.

Not the oxtails are expensive now. Used to be, though, back in the day, you could get an ox tail and then you boil it. them for however long and you make some ox tail soup and you get a nice, good, cheap, hearty meal. Now those are expensive. See, my thought is this. Again, sorry, Jonathan. Again, I'm not an economics major.

Everything's gone to hell. But drop it 25%. And guess what I'm going to do when I'm at H-EB? I'm going to go to the grocery store and buy some other things while I'm waiting for my barbecue to be cooked. And margins are so thin there anyways. At the grocery store, they have to go on volume. Sorry for me to spot up, but I just had to say that.

Because this is half hours for. chicken wings there used to be 20, you got a quarter chicken wing night on Tuesdays. You can't get that anymore. Two for Tuesday. Chicken wings throw away piece of meat.

Now they're good, delicious, crispy fried. They're for what they are. I don't know. But they're chicken elbows. There's gristle in there. There's nasty brown and pink and weird meat in there. I'm team gristle though. It was the throwaway piece of the meat.

So it used to be cheaper too, Jonathan. Sorry. Ain't nobody got time for that. What's the matter with you, Ross? You know, Matt, I've been saying, selling people on the World Cup and you've bought in to some extent yesterday, Argentina

and Egypt was an all-time thriller comeback with Messi scoring a late goal and then Romero scoring the later goal or was it Inzo Fernandez actually? And then Switzerland, Colombia was an absolute dud.

For 120 minutes nobody tried to score there was hardly any type of shots on goal. It was terrible. Ain't nobody got time for that, Switzerland and Colombia. Zero, zero for 120 minutes, with only a few shots on goal, and then you go into PKs?

Come on, man. Ain't nobody got time for that. Ain't nobody got time for that? That came from an impassioned soccer fan right there. I told you. I'm not going to say you that every game's a back and forth thriller. If I did that, I'd be lying. There's bad football games.

there's bad baseball games, there's bad basketball games. That was a bad soccer game. Match, as they say. All right, let's go. Oh, I'm sorry. Jonathan, what's the matter with you, Jonathan? Now, you've been gone for a while. You've been a nice little trip with some friends and family.

Anything out of that trip you want to discuss? You know, there's a lot, but this one thing in particular that I couldn't get my head around. We went to this high-in Argentine and steak place. Like, you know, like my first time- Argentine and steakhouses are normally very good. It was my first time ever going to one of these, you know, real. And so everybody's getting their steak. You know, I played it safe.

I was like, you know what? I'm going to just get a skirk steak. About me, I don't like steak. I'm just, I got to try. I'm at a, you know, high-end restaurant. I'm going to, you know what? We're going to whip you in a shape at some point. But we all get our steaks, you know, her sister-in-law got the ribby, her mom got the surloin.

You know, whatever. It comes out. One of my girl spits out her steak. Spits it out. Spits it out. And so I'm, you know, cut the mind up And I'm like, okay, all right. You know, maybe she's just picky because I'm,

she does that. I'm sorry. I got medium wear. I think the whole table got medium rare. Why is the sticks kind of gray and gamey? Like, it's very salty. Gray and gamey. That's not good.

I'm going to serve you up some, uh, some possum. And, uh, and you're chewing it. You can't even really taste the steak. You're just tasting like kind of this like, I don't know how. how Argentinians like cook their steak, whatever. It was one of the nastiest piece of meat. I think you got a bad restaurant, honestly.

Yeah, I think so. The thing is, it's a high-end place. Because he's Chirazcaria. Is that what they call them? Well, that's Brazilian. Oh, okay. I don't think I've been to Argentinian steak out. I've been to a British.

Many Brazilians, all they do is drink matta all day and eat steak. Argentinians just eat meat. I've been to a multiple Argentineas, a couple in Colombia as well. Because Colombian food's not that great. You've got to eat Argentinian food. But anyways, it was great. Excellent. Huh.

And I'm just saying, guys, I can't describe. And it wasn't just me. It was everybody's piece of me. What is it like watching your girlfriend take a bite of meat and then spit it out? In front of her mom, too. What's wrong with you? What's wrong with you, Matt? I'm sorry, I ask a legit question, Ross.

Thank you, Rob. Thank you, John. Guys, you're not in here, Jonathan. I see his face. He was so proud of himself after that one. Stop. You were. If you got to put that much money out of steak, though, if we got that much money.

Dude, that's crazy. It was like $50. You know, and I got time for that. So, you know, like that? So, well, first of all, you don't like steak in general? I just, yeah, I don't. I just, I'm never going, I'm never going to a restaurant and I'm like, I want a 20-ounce rib-out.

I'm never doing it. Oh, my God. That sounds so good right now. I'm just never doing it. And we'll go get us a rib-eye during the break. You know what? We're going to get a rib-eye, watch it. You know what?

then I'm going to have you come over and we're going to pay and see her you a steak. Or you know what? We're going to go on the curb, baby. 1150 on 790. Let's get to you, folks. You, the great listeners of the Matt Thomas show with Ross, you've got issues. You want to tell somebody to shut their bum ass up? We're here for you.

7.13-212-5-7-90. Steve on 7-90. Thank you for holding. Steve. What's the matter with you? Hello, Steve. Hello, guys. Can you hear me?

Yes, you sound like you're in a tunnel, but go ahead. okay I'm out in the world country Matt you need to shut up a little bit about brisic prices and everything what you need to do is cook the brisket yourself okay I didn't go my ass up man

but I went out to go get food the plan was not to me to cook anything I mean I don't have 12 hours to cook a brisket I wanted something right away and got it and so I guess I got to pay a price for it but it just feels like to me Steve that the biscuit

brisket biscuit the brisket the brisket and the brisket prices have gone up 500% in the last three years. I guess I can see your point there, but still, you need to master smoking to eat yourself. I have never tried to smoke my own meat. Thank you very much for the phone call. And he went to work

yesterday. He's not going to be 12 hours on the smoker. He's not going to get up at 4 a.m. Hey, nobody got time for that. Relax. Who was it? What was his name? Steve? Steve relax. Yeah, it's nice to smoke your own biscuit and sit around, drink some beers and make some brisket. It's good. It's fun. And sing Willie Nelson's craft it's it's a skill

Whiskey river take my mind Not a memory to teach you me Such a bum Oh sorry Yeah let's yeah You know like some Willie Nelson Whiskey River Shit your bum ass up man Beer for my horses

And whiskey for my men Or something like that This is 790 We apologize I'm sorry people Okay Hi we at Sports Talk 790 Would have like to apologize

For the last 15 seconds of this show Of all the girls I've loved to be full See I was trying to defend him too Jonathan Shit your bum ass up man him and then he just started doing that. I'm trying to say the man's got a family. He's got two jobs, three jobs really at this point. And he can't

sit around for 12 hours on a weekday and make a brisket. You got to have a, and you want some brisket, you can go buy some at the store, Steve. And now, I will no longer. Have you ever smoked to brisket, Matt? No. Oh, you're Mr. What do you call yourself? Texas. Shut your bum ass up, man. The thing of... Shut your bum ass up, man. Never smoked a brisket.

And you call yourself Mr. Texas? thing I love is it's growing and growing and growing. Yeah, but most people recognize. I have people walk up to me all the time. He's the worst candidate possible for Mr. Texas. Nobody walks up to you. Zero. No chance.

It's a fact. I know, right? Geo on 790. Geo, what's the matter with you? What's going on, guys? Great stuff as usual. I haven't called in a while, but I had to call in today because I just got to get something off my chest.

So, as you guys know, I got kids, and we're in summer vacation. We're going on vacation. We decided, me and the wife decided to take a trip to Florida and take the kids to Disney World. Now, we have not even left yet. We leave next week. We have not even left yet. And I have already spent around $4,000 on tickets, on little, you know, perks here and there. And, man, so I'm going to be panhandling on 59 right after I come back for my trip.

So Disney, nobody got time for your expensive. ass trips, man. Ain't nobody got time for that. Woo. Gio, boy, I got terrible news for you. In 1971, a ticket to Disney World was $3.50. I mean Disneyland.

Was it Disney World in 71? I'll see Disney World. Disneyland opened up in the early 70s. But, yeah, that's... I got terrible news for you, Gio. The money you will spend on this trip will not equal the enjoyment of the trip. I don't want to be that rude, honest guy,

but I got to be rude and honest. Because not only are you paying crazy money to park, which you have no choice, you must park, right? You know, nobody's walking to Disney World. Yeah. You're paying the exorbitant fee to walk in, and then every drink, every food item, every souvenir is, I mean, the market was incredible.

It's like people, I have some friends of mine that recently came back from Turks and Kekos. And they said it's beautiful there. But you can't enjoy it because it costs you so much to get there to begin with. If I'm going to go on vacation, look, you're going to spend some crazy money. Doing kid stuff is fine. But you're going to run into crowds. You're going to run into people that don't speak English that are going to drive you nuts because they can't, you know, the ride and the fast pass and all that. It's going to rain every day at 3 o'clock.

It Rossi It ain't gonna be worth it for Gio He's gonna make him miserable Adjusted for inflation It was $22 to get in Now it's $120 I think

Yeah 120 to 200 per day Oh in 1971 You could get An experience All the rides for $8 bucks Yeah And if you want fast pass

It's going to cost you extra money It ain't worth it But what if it's a lifetime trip No No no no no No no No no no Stay with me on this.

Depending on how young the kids are, yeah. Once in a lifetime, me? I will tell you this. Once in a lifetime, Freeport. If your kids really want to do the Disney bit, I cannot. I guess I can actually.

I can highly recommend Disneyland over Disney World. Well, you know who's pushing all the prices up. It's all those Disney adults. It's Stephen A. Smith. Yeah, Stephen A. Smith? Yeah, it works for Disney. Nobody got time for that. And I have two dear couples friends that are Disney adults.

Mm-hmm. That's an all-time. I just don't get it. And that's for tomorrow. Well. Kids at heart. Peter Pan Syndrome. They're both in our mid-50s.

Yeah. And they were the Mickey Mouse ears. Woo. Uh-huh. That's what I'm saying. All the time they're wearing the ears? Well, what they do in their own bedroom? is their own business. I ain't asking that, Ross.

Ain't nobody got time for that? Hey there, many. Jonathan on 790. Jonathan, what's the matter with you? Man, I was listening to Gino. I feel bad for that guy because yes, he's going to run into another crowd, and that is the very

heavy, overweight Gen X-Ex-slash millennials that go $15, $20,000 in debt to go to Disney World and get the fast passes and then they wonder why they're in such debt. It's because of them. He will bump into them as well.

But I'm calling because, you know what? Like, I've been gone for a couple weeks and I haven't had a chance to listen. I came back to what was supposed to be Dan and Cole in the morning. And lo and behold, now Cole is gone. It started with Sean. I have had it with IHeart Radio. I would stop listening, but I just love listening to you guys. but I hate supporting IHartRadio.

They come on with their ads and talk about how, oh, you need to advertise with us. We're the number one marketer. And yet, they're laying off all of the good talent. God forbid they better not lay you two off. I swear to God, that will be the point where I stopped. I just wouldn't be able to take it anymore. Ain't nobody got time for IHart Radio.

Ain't nobody got time for that. Oh. we hear at Sports Talk 790 Love our benevolent leaders At IHeartMedia First of all Jonathan Thank you for your support of our show That means a lot to us

Want you'll ever know And our station And our station Cole is missed That's a fact We miss Cole Yes absolutely It was above our heads

We would love for him to be here Yes I heart media number one Y'all got some shooters Whatever Whatever Whatever And

No comment I'm not gonna comment How often do I not comment Anything? Just Google big layoffs With any company And you're going to see a lot of that lately That's all I got

Brian and Pearland What's the matter with you Brian? It's kind of along the same lines Not necessarily directed I'm at my heart radio But any of these companies Who lay people off and say It was a mutual

We mutually agreed to part ways No you didn't Shut your bum ass up You fired them Just say we fired their ass Then we're cutting it or we're cheap and we don't want to pay them. Just, just, and we wish them won their future endeavors.

No, you don't because if they go somewhere and succeed, you look like a buffoon and letting them go, and they go on and making them something big. So just say, just come out and say what you want to say. We fired them. We were tired of their bullcrabness. Here's how the mutual parting of ways went. Hey, we got to let you go.

Do I have any say in this? Can I anything I can do to keep my job? No. Well, okay then. Well, they said okay, so they agree with it. Hey, shut your bum ass up. Nobody wants to get fired or laid off. So don't give me that crap.

Shut your bum ass up, man. All right, thank you, Brian. I will back up Brian on one thing in particular. When I always see people that get let go, there is that statement we wish them well in their future endeavors. Brian, you're 100% right. You know you don't. I do. This is a very big thing.

Oh, stop. Also, the buzzword that we got was restructuring. There was some restructuring. Whoa, it's time. You know what? Jonathan, you said break time? Oh, good. Thank you, Jonathan.

Thank you, Jonathan. We're doing some restructuring. This is the Matt Thomas show with Ross. Now messy deflection there on the way through. Until they line something up here, Argentina. The rated song. Been good plenty enough in the summertime? That's properly rated, I guess.

Okay. You know that. Just flying the family stone. I'm going to tell you, this is your best. song this summer. This song makes me think about going out to the pool and jumping in

and then getting on the grill and cooking some dogs. Okay. Smoking a brisket. Or smoking a brisket for 12 hours if you got time to do that. But it doesn't make me want to go on a boat. This is more like a song you would play in the streets.

No, in the backyard. Maybe if you want to get the fire hydrant. You can do that too. Yeah. You can do that too. Yeah, waste of the county water. Putting playing cards on your bike, driving down the street to the pool. Yeah.

Or biking down the street. Go into a convenience store and stealing a couple of beverages or some candy. Yeah, roll a starburst. Yeah. Oh, great fun of that. I never done that in summertime. Did you ever get caught or do you, you're okay? That was good.

No, actually, I accidentally, my mom took me back to the grocery store. I was like really young. This is one of my first memories. I picked up a pack of gum because I thought, you know, you just pick this pack of gum up take it home. I didn't know any better. And then she made me go back. I had to take it back and apologize to the manager of the grocery store. Was the guy nice about it? As far as I remember, I mean, I was like,

probably five. Okay. Said, look, he didn't punch me in the throat or anything. I would hope not. That'd be weird. Over just Starburst? No, it was a pack of a spearmint. It was like a five, you know, those little five sticks. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. We entered in a fantasy five of best gum, have we? Oh, my God, that's so bad. It is bad. What's wrong with you? I'd go big ride for the win.

Just saying, And then juicy fruit in round two. Juicy Fruit, gonna move you. That was terrible. It ran out of flavor in like five seconds. That's the part of the worst one. And the double mint twins, remember them? Yes, I do.

Oh, yes, Lord. All right, 12.09. Let's get to the news. God, noon. All right, so the Astros got to win yesterday. Against the Washington Nationals, you're saying, oh, great. Only two runs giving up. Tatsuya, my, must have been great.

Well, three runs, actually. because of the solo shot off of Alimber Santa at the end of the game. Josh Hader had to come in because things got a little bit hairy at the end. The bases were loaded. You said sticky, didn't you? Sticky situation.

Tatui Imi struggled with, I don't know, some kind of blister or nail issue. He was bleeding everywhere. Apparently he was on the back of his finger, so he's okay. And he only threw three and two-thirds innings. Joe Spotted telling us yesterday on this show, he wanted at least five.

didn't get that two earned runs three walks three strikeouts one home run era 606 on the year thank goodness for stephen ochert he came in and pitched well same thing for angel de los santos brian king got took care of some business and brian brayu throwing 98.8 on the gun looking good efficient nine pitch seven strike inning that was encouraging ashros get the 63 win mad it's another rubber game as we predicted Spencer Araggetti versus Foster Griffin who's been very good Foster Griffin Foster Griffin's been great for the nationals

who are slight favorites in this one 545 first pitch coming your way here on Sports Talk 7-9 All right sounds good That's excellent Astros again

Another opportunity to win Would it be what 6 out of 7 series Is that how we figured it out Something like that Okay Let's go with that Yesterday of course

In World Cup action You had in a historic comeback Argentina First time in their history Of the World Cup Now this is the team that's won three

times. They've got a lot of history in the World Cup. First time ever coming down from two goals to win as they beat Egypt three to two with a stoppage time winner. And then Switzerland, Colombia was a forgettable 0-120-minute draw that went to penalties. No World Cup action today. Tomorrow, France, Morocco for a chance to go to the semifinals. And then the day after that, on Friday, it will be Spain and Spain and Belgium Yeah, sorry,

I didn't show up on my scores for a second Spain and Belgium for a chance to go to the same as well. Are we rooting for Belgium to do well so it makes us look better? So we're good? Yeah. I guess it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.

And then Saturday will be Norway, England and also Argentina. See, this is, what the hell? This ESPN score thing is messing up. It's okay. It's Google, right? It's fine.

You'll find the game. Can I give you an NBA note? Yes. I follow a Twitter account called Los Vegas locally. It kind of gives you the vibe of what's happening in LV. And we'll be, and Ross and I are going to go there this weekend, as a matter of fact. We'll be doing the shows Monday and Tuesday. We're not taking time off because we like doing shows at 8 o'clock in the morning Pacific time.

Okay. I didn't call you like at 7. It might go up? Maybe. Probably. Probably. I can do it. A new group is pursuing an NBA team in Las Vegas.

It is led by Hall of Famer Jerry Colangelo and former NBA coach Vinay Del Negro. Those are both guys with Phoenix ties. They claim $8 billion in total capital. Wow. Promise to, quote, build the most impressive state-of-the-art basketball arena in the world. So a new arena. Oh, yeah, they're not playing at Team Mobile. Whoever's going there is not, they're playing somewhere else.

That arena has already passed its prime, which is, frankly, that's a mistake on the folks that built the arena. Come on, Team Mobile. They want to build it. I think they want to shape it as a diamond. It opened in 2016. Team Mobile seats 20,000. What's the big issue? Remember I was there for the NBA tournament?

It's mid at best. Actually, 18,000 for basketball, 20,000 for fights. Yeah. Ice hockey 17-5. So the name they want to name the basketball team? I need a ruling. Okay. Now remember, I liked the Las Vegas 21s, and you said that was not going to happen.

Okay. They want to name their team the Las Vegas Jacks. What ruling do you need? Do you like it? No. Now, and it's very smart for them not to go black jacks in the NBA. Here's the logo of it. What do you think? I don't like it.

Okay. Jacks? It's like kangaroo jack. I don't like it. They're they've done spades? Spades? I don't think so. I think that might have.

Yeah, I think it's got a connotation to it too. Sorry. A lot of. I think it's a connotation, but 21s. I will. A lot of races. Las Vegas 21 sounds. A lot of races in the American history. Yeah.

It's not good. You can't keep a racist towards the number 21, can you? Yeah, I think that doesn't seem like it. Los Vegas Jacks. I think you're safe there. Thank you. All right. That's your news at noon.

You snort again. You're averaging one snort per week on the show. I'm just saying it is a good name. It could be worse. Just a lot of unfortunate and avoidable names. You don't want to put that thing in live motion, do you? 713-212-5-790 7132-1-3-2-1-1. Oh, by the way, a quick note, Matt.

The Egypt Football Association's upset now, too. What are they mad about? Well, that goal that was disallowed, where they called the foul like 100 yards away? That's rig. The Egyptian Football Association, quote, cannot remain silent regarding the referee decisions following the team's loss to Argentina at the World Cup.

the refereeing decisions witnessed during the match cannot remain silent against Argentina as well as the failure to make appropriate use of the Vizio assistant referee system several key incidents raised serious concerns and left profound questions about the consistency and fairness of decisions that directly influence the course of the game

you know I would call don't you our man in Washington DC I thought you were going to say Cody Campbell no because Cody's over one the Belgian Football Association They're pissed too. Yeah, President Trump's one for one. Makes phone call.

You're going to help Egypt over Argentina? Hey, maybe we get some economic freedom out of that. How's our relationship with Egypt? Is it good? I imagine so. I don't know. And do we have any business in Cairo? I don't think we have any beef with Egypt at the moment.

What's that? I think we got a military base there. I did see some memes of Messi kicking down the pyramids. That was in Porteast. Is that Egyptian racism? I don't think so. go to break let's go to break let's go to break

you ever notice folks when the show falls off the rails Jonathan always comes in and let's go to a break and he's right usually we need to get go to break if you have been with us since 10 o'clock we thank you we understand you guys

got to go to lunch you have meetings and whatever but please try to make much as your day with us as possible we will try to entertain you the best we can and try to give you interesting people to have on the show we had Brian Bogussevick about an hour and a half ago. It's always good to have him on and we'd like to replay some of that. And we'll do that about an hour from now. So if you missed the

Brian Bogey conversation at 11, we'll replay it for you at about 130. Believe it or not, today coming up at 150. Anything on the topic of conversation for you there? I'm believe it or not. Switzerland? They beat Columbia in P.Ks? All things Swiss? What's going on with the Wimbledon? I don't know. We'll figure something. No, we always do.

Dolly Parton's got a new Broadway show starting up. Oh, you scared me. I know. I'm glad she's okay. Oh, well, Justin, we have some breaking news. I saw that about Justin Verlander. Yeah, it's not really worthy of one, I think. You only want to play one?

He's all-time Houston Astros legend. Yeah, but he has a gravy-reteming brother. Oh, see, you know what? You don't want one because you're holding a grudge. Who cares about his brother? First of all, this is the true, Jonathan. He doesn't want to hit one of the all-time grades is retiring. he doesn't want to play a breaking news sounder because he wouldn't come on this show when he was with you know we have player interviews and jesson verlander always said no so matt's holding a grudge

can i tell you the reason why he said no this shows you what a diva he is and i guess when you're one of the greatest pictures of all time you're diva the astros coordinate with us getting the various players on some are a piece of cake hey i'll love to do it some are like can we do it later in the year some just don't and most of them say yes some have been on less than others but Generally speaking, we've had everybody on from Correa to Cole to Breggman to Springer. Al Tuvei. All the star, Altuve, every one of the stars, except one. So the Astros PR department, and they're just doing their job saying, hey, can you do this weekly Tuesday hit with Matt and Ross? First thing out of his mouth was, how big is their audience? Yeah, that's kind of crazy.

Kind of crazy. He wants to know if we're a big deal or not. We weren't big enough of a deal. So we can't take 10 minutes of his time one time per season. Well, I did interview him twice at Fan Fest. So I interviewed him twice. That's because he had a gun to his head probably. No, I'm saying.

No, he was very polite, actually, very good, professional. Did a great job. So you don't want me to read his statement is what you're saying. Go ahead and read it. All right, we have some reading music. Here we go. Breezing. No, we have this too.

Oh, this is a good too. Put some good music today. I want to thank the commissioner for the incredible honor of being selected to the All-Star game. If you're not heard, he was a legend pick. Over the last several months, I've realized that my time has come. While I'm fully committed to giving my team everything I have for the rest of this season, I've decided this will be my last. It's fitting that I get to finish where it all started with the Detroit Tigers,

the organization that drafted me and gave me my first opportunity. Baseball's given me more than I could ever have imagined taught me discipline, resilience and the value of continue to adapt and evolve. To every teammate, coach, player, clubhouse, attendant, and fan who has been part of this jersey journey, and to every Houston sports radio host named Matt, thank you. It's been a privilege to share the field with you. To my family, especially my wife, Kate. Ooh, there you go.

Thank you for standing beside me through every season, every rehab, and every high and low. I couldn't have done this without you. It's time for the next chapter. But first, I'm excited to finish this season. The only way I know how with everything I've got, Justin Verlander. And because we're fair and balance on the show, Justin Verlander is one of the greatest pitchers in the history of the Houston Astros. Yes, he is.

And was an integral part of one world series. Was he a part of the second one? Yes. But not a good part of it. Like just a mid part. In 2022? weren't we just happy you got five in one start or something like that? Am I making that up?

It might have been a lot, but I think he still pitched well in that World Series. I can go look it up. Did he win? 17. Two Siongues or won here in Houston? 17, he was glorious. I remember being in the ballpark the day he entered and just not on the mound, but just

came in in uniform and people lost their mind and for all a good reason. He was great. Two bad starts and two good starts in 2022. He was horrible against Seattle. Okay. They won. Yeah. and he was great against the Yankees, six innings of one-run ball, 11 strikeouts. Then he was bad in his first game against the Phillies,

five innings, five runs. Oh, I remember that. They came unraveled on him, I think. I think he was pitching well, and then a bunch of runs got scored. And then the second start against the Phillies, he was good, five innings of one run ball. That's a quality start.

Light. Yeah, if you've won 250 games and you're married to a supermodel, aren't you, I guess I have to give him the benefit of that I would say you are just going to be a diva for all the right. reasons, right? Yeah, I mean, you are married with him, he's not good. Your glorious wife and you get a glorious

baseball career. Yes. Overall, yeah, as an Astro in the postseason? Pretty good. First ballot Hall of Famer. Absolutely. Probably wearing Detroit gear. Not that that makes a big difference, but he will give the Astros as they're flowers to. He just will.

I just, it was just, when I was told that he wanted the audience size of our show, that was just kind of, he's a diva. He's a diva. Diva. As an Astro in the postseason, 22 games, 374 ERA. 132 strikeouts, 127 innings. Pretty good. Especially when you're going up against the best hitters in baseball.

And it wasn't 25-year-old Justin Verlinder. It was older ones. Yeah. All right. Let's go to the phones. And we'll do that with Scott and J.R. We'll get to you guys one, two coming out of the break. 713212-5-790. 1234 on Sports Talk 790. Verlander will be the subject of today's edition, believe it or not, a second time appearance for one,

Justin Craig Verlander. Brooks, actually. Or is it? No, it's Brooks. All right. I'm pretty sure. I mean, memory serves, which it does often.

But often it does not these days. Used to have an ironclad memory. It's terrible now. There is a... Don't get old, Jonathan. There's a sports broadcasting camp that has done somewhere in the East Coast, and it was turning on Twitter yesterday.

A kid went to this camp. Oh, I saw this. And the broadcasters were asking him who played who and he could give the game, result, and the score. Going back, what did I see, 12 years? Yeah, I think it was something like that.

I know what you're talking about. I didn't realize that was a broadcasting camp. Yeah, it was a play-by-play camp where young people go to learn how to call play-by-play. You know, it's a crazy thing We're going to phones one second here. You know who Marilu Hinner

is? Yeah, that's the gymnast. No, that's Mary Lou Retton. Oh, not bad. And your attempt there at humor. That's who popped in my head when you said Mary Lou. She has, and help me with the phrasing on this. Oh, I can't help me if I don't have no any contacts.

Who is she? She was an actress. She was in on taxi. She was a redhead. She was also in the movie physical. She's been on a variety of different things. Mary Lou Hennar. Oh, yeah, I know.

I recognize her. You give her a date. Oh, I've seen this, yeah. She can tell you what day of the week it was and has, I don't know if her memory is perfect, but she can give you, you can tell her what was the, what day of the week was December 9th, 1983 and she could tell you to the exact moment. What is that called? Autism.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. You couldn't have that. Identic memory? Yeah. But I don't know if she has memories. of every single thing that happened in her life? This says superior autobiographical memory. She can remember every day of her life

since she was 11. That sounds terrifying. I don't for me. No, because part of, you'll learn this, Jonathan, is you want to embellish things in your younger life, in your older life. Remember back when you did this back in the day? Also known as hyperthymecia. So she can remember every single day.

Yes. Day of the week and what she did. That sounds distressing. Could you imagine what you were doing on January 9th, 1987, nope. No.

Probably crying and watching cartoons? The only thing I remember is January 3rd, 2010 was my first day here at the station, I think. It was on Monday,

maybe the third of the fourth. And I wrote out this long thing about who I am and where I was and where I'm back and I think I threw it away within three minutes.

I'm like, I don't read my show. It's stupid. Oh, what Jim Rome does. Excuse me. Only other next. national host do that. Have a take, do not suck, and ride out your entire

show. And I was meeting this guy. I was like, man, who's this Matt guy? I hope he's cool. Hope he lets me talk on air. One and a two, ain't bad. And you're like, I have a terrible, terrible music preferences. I couldn't, I couldn't, it took me like 10 tries to play a song that you

actually learned. And I frankly enough, 16 years later, the music has not changed. Scott and River Oaks on 790, Scott. Good afternoon. Matt, Ross, what's going on, fellas? Hi. First off, quick shout out to JV. I was listening last segment we all talking about him.

I'm sorry to hear that he wasn't a friend of the show, but definitely, as y'all said, one of the greatest astros of all time. I think my favorite memory of his, I mean, there's so many of them, but just one that for some reason is in sync in my brain. I remember game two in 2017 against the Dodgers, that was the game where Altuva and Correa went back to back to time. to take the lead. I think Marwin hit the tying home run off Janssen and the ninth to send

it to extras. He started that game, I'm pretty sure, and there was a moment where, you know, it was late in the game. We might have been down a little bit, and he was, like, almost in, like, not street clothes, but he wasn't in his uniform anymore, and he was all iced up and he, like, was barking at the dugout to keep, you know, keep fighting,

not give up and things like that, and there was such a cool video of that, and, you know, obviously a great player, so big shout out to him. There was sort of two things. I wanted to talk about that they're in two totally different directions. So I guess I'll save one of them for a later day and focus more on the Astros. Last time, you know, one of the more recent times, Matt, I had called in to talk about the trade deadline.

You and I both agreed that the biggest priority for the team should be in the outfield. And I think I'm sort of changing my mind on that a little bit. I mean, obviously, if you could get an upgrade in the outfield, that would be huge. But the way the team is constructed right now, I think there's a formula for us to win. And that is, obviously, our bullpen has been much improved. That's going to need to continue. And our starting pitching is going to need to give us a chance. And our big players in our lineup are going to need to be big for going to win games late in the season.

So if we're going to win late in the season, you know, Alvarez, Alteuvae, Parades, Walker, Jeremy Pania, they're going to have to be key. But in order for them to be key, our starting pitching in our bullpen to be effective, our starting pitching is going to have to give us a chance. So, you know, getting a starting pitcher might, I think for the long term, solving the outfield is more of a priority, but I might be leaning towards the formula for winning this season is having guys that can just save your bullpen and keep your offense in the game. And I actually have a really good trade candidate for us. He happens to be pitching against the Astros tonight.

I know y'all mentioned him earlier. Foster Griffin, he's on a one year, $5.5 million. deal out of Japan. His ERA is under three. If the nationals are out of it in a month, that would be a guy that I think we could would be a really good, you know, piece to add to the team. But

I don't know. Here's the problem with that is that I think the nationals, and again, I'm not done a deep dive of the nationals, but everyone watching the last couple of games, I'm sure you have as well. They are starving for pitching. They got enough hitting. They need pitching. And so I can't imagine them bowing out of the race for the

wild card, much less giving up a picture, which is one of their few commodities I've got at this point. That's true, but they might be out of it because, I mean, unfortunately for them, I think they're a little bit over 500, but you're going to... Yeah, but they want to contend in the next couple years with their young pieces. I don't think they're going to be selling off much. Yeah, they're not holding under what they used to have. They're just trying to rebuild it.

They're trying to build, yeah. Well, what I'm saying, Foster Griffin's on a one-year deal, $5.5 million. So I don't know if they view him as a piece for the long-term or not. So that's... Well, he's... I mean, what I'm seeing is that he's under control until he's under team control until 2030. Oh, okay. Is he?

I thought he was on a one-year deal because he was out of Japan. I'm seeing arbitration. It says arbitration eligible 2028, signed through 2026. So that'd be this year. Then arbitration, I don't know. That's confusing because it says earliest free agent. It says he's not a free agent until 2031 on baseball reference, which leads me to believe he's under the nationals control. So if it's a one-year deal, I don't know if he's.

going to go to arbitration what exactly is going to happen. It looks like what I'm reading is he's under team control for like the next four years. Well, I mean, again, Scott, it's by far not a terrible option. Just that's the team I would not expect to be giving up pitching when that's the one thing they've been saying over and over again is what separates them from the rest of the team in the National League.

Thanks, Scott for the phone call. Appreciate it. Good stuff. Yeah. And again, everybody's up for conjecture. If you're going to go get a guy like that, you better throw a massive haul at them and for guy with controllable years, the one thing, again, Astro fans,

and I think most of you understand this, the Astros don't have a massive halt to give. No. Yeah, the Nationals have all these young pieces. James Wood, who's been crushing the Astros, Luis Garcia, Abrams, Curtis, Me, they have these young hitters that are all OPSing over 800. They need pitching, and they want to contend over the next couple years.

So I don't know if they're just going to be giving away pitchers. Yeah, let's go to JR and Oklahoma. They're tired of putting Miles Macalus out there. there. Michaelis. Michaelis. Michaelis. Hi, JR.

What's going on, gentlemen? Hi. Hey. So, when I saw the breaking news from Justin Berlander, I immediately thought of, just like you said, Matt, one of, if not the best pitchers in Astros history. Absolutely. Got two World Series, two Sigh Youngs with Houston. And he's got, I think he's got three Sight Youngs.

total. Correct. But through a no hitter with Houston, do you guys think that he gives the middle finger to Detroit and Don's the Houston Astros hat? Why would he give the middle finger to Detroit? I don't know. I mean, he accomplished the whole lot. He's there now.

He doesn't hate them. He's there now, but I mean, he's possibly the only player in Astro's history or that one team has traded for twice. I would be surprised. I would imagine he's going to go to Detroit. Now, they don't have to listen to them, Matt. It's no longer in the player's hands anymore. But they do take suggestion.

They do allow them to suggest. And I'm going to guess he's going to push for Detroit. 14 years in Detroit, seven years in Houston. Yeah. And again, it will not, if you're a Justin Verlander fan, which I'm assuming you are, J.R., it's not going to hurt your feelings of the word to Detroit cap. I would assume not, right?

No, not at all. It's just a deal like It'd be kind of cool to have The JVs to say hey you know I want to wear a Houston hat Because I accomplished so much here Yeah, he's a tiger though Yeah, thanks Jared for the phone call

The reason why The players don't get to choose anymore Is because of Wade Boggs Yeah Wade Boggs Anybody that's watch baseball Knows at Wade Boggs

One of the greatest third baseman ever to play For the Boston Red Sox He ends his career with Tampa Bay He gets pissed off at the Red Sox For the way that the whole thing went down and he's in the baseball Hall of Fame wearing a Tampa Bay cap. I mean, come on. Right.

So now they take suggestions, but they don't have, players don't have finals. That'd be like if Tony Yusebio was ever to get in the baseball Hall of Fame. Wait a second. Maybe wearing a Rockies cap. No, it wouldn't be like that because he only played professionally for the Houston Astros. The Astro Clipper, baby. I like my example, though. And I'm sticking to it.

I came across that jersey in my closet the other day. Did you? Shout out to the guy they brought me that. You never wear it. It's a signed Tony Usabio jersey. They'd be like, why don't I wear the Declaration of Independence, Matt? No, we've got to preserve it. When are you getting an artificial, historical artifacts in your home?

Yeah, Tony Acebio signed jersey? Have you got it framed up yet? No. Let's go. What are you waiting for? It's preserved in a plastic bag. It's probably going to have moth balls in eventually. No, it's preserved. I just told you.

You take care of a terrible thing. You can't take care of. You don't know what the hell you're talking about. All right. 1245 on Sports Talk 790. Carly Lloyd Rips. Policic is getting ripped by a lot of people. So I want to get into a macro view of this.

We'll let you hear what Carly had to say about Polisick's performance at the World Cup. Your daughter? Policic. Oh, Carly Lloyd. Carly Lloyd. Not Carly Floyd. Carly Lloyd. You didn't notice that?

Serta ProPanters. All right, Jonathan, I sent you a piece of audio. This is Carly Lloyd on the Fox Post Game Show a couple days ago after Team USA dropped a 4-1 game to Belgium. And Christian Polisic, what does his nickname? Ross, does he have nicknames like the Chosen One, the Go? Captain America or something like that. And fairness to him, he's been battling injuries or did battle injuries, and now apparently he's resting. Yeah, Captain America is his nickname that I see.

I don't know if he has got any others. But, and people isolated on his performance in the World Cup. Mm-hmm. And generally speaking, people would say they're disappointed. Not a bus, but disappointed. The Hershey Hammer. Okay. He's from Hershey, PA.

Okay. So disappointed, one and more didn't get enough. And here's Carly Lloyd. Yes. To further accentuate her point. No, look, you know, it's a bit of a downer thing. us being out here now after this loss but I just I felt like they they lost the game before they even stepped out under the pitch and and I'm not sure why and I don't know the

reasons but just from the beginning just chasing tentative scared just not confident on the ball and I think big-time players you you wanted some of those big-time players to step up in big moments and I got to be honest you know I was a bit disappointed with Christian Polisic I think whether he wants to be the star of this team or not, we didn't see enough from him in this particular game and really the whole World Cup. Little glimpses here and there, but, you know, look, aside from this loss, I think on the brighter storyline, it's been a fantastic World Cup. This team has united the country. They have, you know, gotten American fans to call in love with them. And there is a bright

future, but this is just a real disappointing loss to go out on. All right. She has, like everything in social media, nobody can say, yeah, Carly, you brought up some good points. Thank you for your optimism. Or thank you for your commentary. It was, you know what you're talking about? You're a woman. Your sport doesn't matter.

I mean, it got as ugly as. Now, some people said spot on. I took it as someone that doesn't have a dog in this fight that we've come to appreciate some brutal honesty from our Fox, from our World Cup announcers. I just have this feeling and I don't know because I mean I'm a soccer fan but I'm not like there are people who are big USM&T fans and get all into the player selections and stuff like that I'm not that kind of guy but just from you have her calling him out you've had some comments from Tim Howard there's seem to be some veiled references to him not being a good person or him having a big ego or him not playing through pain as much as he could because you've

had comments from Carly Lloyd. You have had comments from Tim Howard, who's the legendary keeper in the United States history. You've had comments from Landon Donovan, who of course is well known and one of the better players in men's national team history saying like he is who he is and the type of

person he is and stuff like that. So it does seem to maybe there's maybe a darker side to this story, not like, you know, criminal or anything like that. But maybe he is an egomaniac. Maybe he isn't giving his all as much as people think he could. But I don't know why this struck me, but I think generally speaking, Fox

and the World Cup broadcasts have been applauded because of their a lot of resources putting in it, a lot of different perspectives, a lot of the heavy hitters, the superstars, and we see this with all things. I mean, look at the Fox set during the playoffs. You got Big Poppy, you got Derek Peter, we got Alex Rodriguez,

NFL's and Michael Strahan, and had Howie Long and Terry Bradshaw. So, these studio shows are becoming huge components of the game. of the broadcast. I'm not a big fan of them per se because if I'm watching all these hours of baseball, all these hours of basketball and all these hours of football, I don't have time for the pregame stuff.

But I'd rather than be honest, then skirt the line of, well, they were out there and they were competing and they were hard and you don't know what it's like to be them. That's what makes you want to watch is when Cardi Lloyd says things that may not be the most popular thing. Now, sometimes it goes too much to the other extreme. Like, for instance, TNT, the NBA boys, now on ESPN, inside the NBA,

they get criticized because they don't like the perceptions. They don't like anything in the NBA. That it's, all they do is get up on stage and just rip the crap out of anywhere. They don't say, man, that was, boy, Shay Gilles Alexander, when he scored together 14 straight points, that was so much fun. Or, man,

that Isaiah Hartenstein Block was so good. They just go to, oh, my, My God, Kobe or LeBron looks old and Austin Reeves can't guard me. So I think it's another exercise in what people want and what networks want out of their, quote-unquote, pre-half and post people. Yeah, there was a clash. I mean, because you had T.R. Yonri and Zlatanibovic who are two legendary soccer players on with Alexi Lalas, who's like the American hot take machine. And the other guys are like trying to break down tactics.

and then Lilalus is just like spouting out a bunch of cliches and how do you get to step in a big game. So there is a different, like here in the United States, we have gravitated towards the loudmouth, hot take stuff. But we also have people that will not, like, I'm not necessarily watched every Tom Brady game. I know Tom Brady was a lot better the last season than he was his first year as an analyst.

The only person I can really tell you that I've watched over the years that has been more, blunt and honest with their assessment of what they're watching, probably was when Troy Aikman left Fox to go to Monday Night Football. Yeah, Troy Ackman would do it some. Van Gundy was good at it. Yeah. And if you do it every single time, then you get the problem that you are the TNT, the ESPN guys. But if you don't do it enough, then people don't really respect the credibility because it's not always just about the effort. It's about the execution. You can't just always play hard. If you have some of the, that just always sees the bright side of things, even in, I mean, look, 4-1 was embarrassing, right? Fair to fair to say? And the Pellissick was just an innocent bystandard out there.

I could see why people would say. Yeah, yeah. People are criticizing from getting hurt. I mean, he was limping. Like, if you're limping, get off the field. I don't like that criticism. Oh, Atlanta Donovan was like, you'd have to drag me off the field. Well, yeah.

Okay, you want to hurt your team and stay out there. So Lawless was the hot-take machine. and the two dudes are like, hey, I've actually been on the field. Oh, they were making fun of them, yeah, absolutely. Zlatan's like a legend for, he played for Barcelona, Inter Milan, A.C. Milan, Manchester United. Tierion Ries, an all-time great, played for Barcelona and Arsenal.

And, yeah, they're just in a different class. And Alex Lollos, I don't know, he played for the New York Metro Stars. Yeah, the Washington Beavers, I don't know. The Beavers. The Beavers. Washington, Washington Beaver or soccer is... Which doesn't mean you can't be good. That's right.

Unqualified. To speak about sport. But it was just a different level. All right. Let's get to the final hour of the show. A little astro chatter. Sal, you know what? We are crushing it in where Minnesota.

We crush Oklahoma City. We crush in the Valley. New Zealand. California. Houston? Denver. Interloop, battle loop. Orlando area where Sal is.

Bellway? We're trying. Trying to cover a little niche inside the 713. Okay. Shout out to those of you. There are 2-8-1-1-1. as well, 83-2ers? We'll take the 419 if we need to, right?

Take whatever we can get. 713-212-5-7-9. Remember, cell phone change. I remember back in the day, we used to have a cell phone line that was free. Oh, really? Yeah, because if you called, if you had 713 area code and you were calling 281, that was a long-distance call. Now you can just use your minutes.

You can call anybody you want to now. Anytime minutes. We'd have the toll-free GTE line. What the hell you're? talking about. That's 1999 for your brother. Go free GTE. Hopefully. It was like Star 700 or something like that. Okay. Something crazy.

But you can join us right now on your cell phone plan. And if your cell phone plan has minutes restrictions, send your bill to Ross. You'll be happy to memorize. Get out of your time machine. You got minutes restrictions. 713-212.5.790. This is the Matt Thomas show with Ross.

105 on Sports Talk 790. It is Matt and Ross with the final 55 minutes of this show. If you have missed the conversation, we have with Brian Bogos Civic at 11 o'clock. We'll replay it for you coming up in about two 25 minutes. Believe it or not, today is all things about Justin Vernet. He was like, why? He announced he's going to retire at the end of the season. He's only made one start for the Tigers. He'll be an honorary member of the 2006 All-Star team on the American League side.

He will not compete. I don't think he can physically compete if he wanted to, but he is an honorary member. And the legend pick. One of the all-time goats. Should not count on his resume as an all-star appearance. It does it? Or do you don't know? I think it does. Oh, come on. Pretty sure. It happened for Clayton Kershaw, right? I wonder Ben Verlernier will be at the game.

Why are you wondering? Why are you so fixated on Ben Verlander? It's a bit. No, I think you really stay up at night worried about Ben Verlanderlady. I don't think so. Let's see. Yeah, it says 2025 All-Star for Clayton Kershaw on his resume. Really?

Shouldn't count. Sorry. I'm looking at Ben Verlander on Twitter. Why? Congratulations to my brother. He's retiring and he wants me to be in Philadelphia and he's paying for my airfare and my hotel and my rental car and my food allowance. He didn't say that. You don't know that.

You don't know that at all. No, he didn't say any of that. It's on threads. You're such a liar. Nobody's on threads. Except for catfishers. 713-212-5-790. Let's say to our friends, Sal, in Central Florida.

Sal, good afternoon to you, friend. Hey guys, great show as always. Enjoy you listening to you guys. Thank you. First, this poor guy who's going to be going to be going to Disney with his family, he needs to have somebody around who knows CPR when he gets home and gets his credit card bill. And he may have to take a home equity loan out also. And you know what, though, Sal, before we get to the baseball, I didn't want to be that mean to him.

But I feel like we're brothers and all this, we're families, were husbands, we're kids, we're fathers. it was my civic responsibility to tell him how ridiculous expensive everything is in that area. I mean, even the neighboring hotels are expensive. The neighboring restaurants, you just can't go to Orlando. You can't go to those amusement parks and think you're going to do it on a budget. It's just impossible. Yeah, and as residents, we get a little bit of a break on the tickets, but you have to use them on a specific day.

Oh, sure. You have to use them that day. If you don't use them that day, you lose them. That's it. One other point, the heat index here has been well over 100 to 105 three weeks straight. So it is hotter here than it is in Houston right now. A lot of indoor activities these days. Quick question.

Are you guys having any remotes next week? No remotes. Matter of fact, we're going to be in Las Vegas Monday and Tuesday, but we're working from our hotel room because we're, our depth chart is a little leaner than we'd like it to be. We're actually heading to Arlington this weekend for the three games. Oh, nice. That should be fun. Yeah, and then we're going to head down to Houston after that. Yeah.

Anyway, sorry we missed you guys, but maybe another trip. For sure, for sure. My comments about the Astros, is Dana Brown's job hinging on these three pitchers, Weiss, M.I. and Borough, it seems like he's whiffed on all three. And one other point, I know there's no way that McCullors gets a quality. qualifying offer. Correct. I think if they offer one to Brian Abreu, they need to have the head examined also.

But, you know, I don't, unfortunately, Lance was a great astro. And Abreu was a pretty good astro also. But there's something going on between his ears that I don't think they can fix. My last point is the Hall of Fame, I think that they pick the jerseys that the guys go in with. because there were some guys that were just trying to sell like naming rights to their Hall of Fame induction. No, no, it's, yeah. We mentioned that last hour, Sal. It's no longer in the players' hands.

They can take a recommendation, but it's the national baseball Hall of Fame's decision, not the players, which is sad because you're right. People are trying to make some money out of it. People also were trying to have some vendettas against an old team, i.e. Wade Boggs with the Red Sox. Sal Green Conversation. Let me give you a few things to chew on here. Rossi. He said, Dana Brown's. future

attached to the three guys. This is tough because I like Dana. Burroughs. Disaster. Emi. It's a disaster up to this point. He's over six. Where in July?

Both are terrible. Sorry. Kai Wei Tong. Not good. Okay. He's in AAA. Is he kidding he called back yet? No. No. But that was more for just back

off in the ending. He looked like he needed a break. But generally speaking, Cowboy Tong has been the best of three by far. By far. Peter Lambert, good. Yep. Nick Allen, I don't even count. No, that was, I mean... Unless they wouldn't, they could have gotten somebody else.

Ryan Weiss could not have been more of a disaster. Yeah. So Weiss, Burroughs, Emai, Tong, Lambert, Lamont Wade. Lamont Wade was good

for a little while For a week I mean Nate Pearson's been okay He found Stephen Ocurt, right? Yeah I was here to kill last year Last year Stephen Rooker came over

But the problem is you don't When you're judging Dana You're not doing it Over the sum of the parts You're doing it was He's not going to Jim Crane Like hey we got Stephen O'Kert What's the problem?

I got you, you say Kikuchi Remember that a couple years ago? I got you that it doesn't count Hey who's your guy man Who got you? Stephen O'Kard and Brian King, baby? My gut tells me this has already been decided.

What do you mean? That, oh, you mean Dana Brown's fate? Dana Brown's fate is decided. Whether it's... It could be. You made some, we had to make some decisions that you maybe were not a part of.

We understand that. You're a good company man. Welcome back next year. Or I just need to make a change. I don't think there's going to be rights in the streets. Pitching has been largely just not anywhere close to where you're like. And the monoling system is not any better

than it was five years ago. No, you got a couple of guys who can develop. Alvarez is a good signing. Kevin, I'm talking about. Yeah. But every minor league system gets rated on Ross. Every single one of them. When you make trades, 90% of trades in baseball involve prospects. So when you create a minor league system,

not only are you trying to replenish what you have and moved people up, but you also have to have parts that can be used in making trades. And if the Astros can't make any significant trades because their minor league system is not full of stars, somebody has to wear that hat of who's responsible building up our arsenal. Yeah, and even the guys you traded away, I mean, Jacob Melton, what's he doing?

That's been a blessing. Drew Gilbert, what's he doing? Nothing. Ryan Clifford, how's he doing? I have no idea. I don't think he's doing much of anything. Even the guys you traded away haven't done anything. Willier Bray was the Vasquez trade, but that was before Dana Brown.

That was James Click. Ryan Clifford, by the way, is 22 years old, and he plays... Where is he playing now? I'm looking it up right now. Syracuse AAA. Yeah, he's been in the minor league since he was... He's got a 660 OPS with the Syracuse Mets in 193. It's been the model league since 2002.

Yeah, he's 22. I mean, he's not super old, but would you like to be seeing some more out of them? You're right. So there you go. Even the guys you traded away haven't really amounted anything. Which means... Did you mis-evaluate those guys?

It's hard to pick good picks out of the size of the top 10, 15 in baseball. But it is allowable. Yeah. Well, the problem is... It can happen. Oh, by Walker Yonick hasn't played since May. Yeah. Dana's not looking good.

I don't. Again, it's one opinion. It's one person. There's no vote. You need Emi, you need Burroughs, you need something. You know what you need? You need a deep playoff run. That would work.

It's very, no, it's not impossible. Even then, James Cook's like, eh, deep playoff run might not do it, guys. We won the World Series. Jimmy Crane told me goodbye. Yeah. Yep. So even deep playoff success does not guarantee your future.

114 on Sports Talk 790. 713-212-5-790. 7-1-3-212-5-7-90. Brian Bogusovic in 15 minutes, believe it or not, Justin Verlander on his impending retirement at the end of the season. He will fall well short of 300. I think I've said it's 5 million times. Rosson will say it 5 million times in one.

We ain't getting another 300 game winner in baseball. Of course not. it's kind of sad because I grew up in a generation where I saw lots of players get 300 yeah well it's never going to happen again well nobody's going to get Cy Young 500 so damn

you spin right 115 on 790 so as all you know advertising makes the world go around certainly in our industry yes if you want to support our show the best way is to support our advertisers and we'll tell them that

we sent you yeah let's show Shout out Serta Pro and Centrogenics and Uptown Appliance. And on the crib. Curb? Curb. It says crib on there. Well, I know. You were on Bergertyed that one. Sorry.

It's okay. On the curb. My mom and her family were out of town. Went ahead on the curb brunch. We can go Sunday. Oh, really? Yeah. Dress let you as French toes.

We'll not let you do. Uptown appliance, Big City Wings. Kalshi, affordable tree. Thanks, everybody. Shell, Federal Credit, you. All those folks that make this show possible. So yesterday, the Big 12 announced a multi-year what they call entitlement partnership with a group called Ronster Energy.

Yeah, entitlement partnership, just meaning they're the title sponsor, right? Yes. It will be called Ronster Energy, Big 12 football, Ronster Energy, Big 12 basketball. We're going to do this all year for a, it's the Ronster Energy Big 12 tournament. It's the Ronster Energy Big 12 championship. Yeah, unfortunately. Yes, he is, he knows. And as part of this entitlement with the football, basketball and men's and women,

they get jersey patches. Okay, so Monster Energy is they're getting every mention, every TV broadcast, every football broadcast, every, everything, the Monster Energy Big 12

indoor track championships. No. Football, basketball, men's and women. So three things. Okay, so football and men's and women's basketball. Jersey's playing services. For all three sports.

For those three sports. Jersey's, Wow. That's good value. $20 million annually to be dispersed between 16 schools. So 1.25. Yep. Now, that's going to probably also preclude them, at least on the jerseys and on the floors from other people jumping in on that. So what's Ronster's major competitor?

Red Bull. I don't know. So Red Bull could do radio. They could do signage in stadiums. Like if Iowa State had a big deal of Red Bull. I don't think it precludes them from that. But from the patches to the on court and to the association with the league, it is Ronsor Energy. Okay.

So what do people do instead of going, okay, that's nice money, good for you? You're bucking the train because Big 12 is trying to do that. They're trying to go out and think outside the box. It has been largely criticized about the lack of money that those schools have gotten. And here's my two thoughts about this really quick. First and foremost, I'm going to put we because I'm a Big 12 school. Okay. I'm wearing my U-Bade shirt today.

You are. Yeah. Go cooks. We are not the SEC. Correct. We are not the Big Ten. And I don't think anybody that's in Big 12 country necessarily argues with that. Okay.

Those two big boys are in their own stratosphere. That means we can't compete. Doesn't mean we can't win games. Doesn't mean we can't play for championships. but, and we're going to have a say-so in the college football playoff, and we're going to have a say-so certainly, we certainly have had it in the NCAA tournament, right? Mm-hmm. Okay.

Secondly, what I think is, Yormark, and I think Brett Yormark's a little bit of an odd cat, he didn't unilaterally make this decision. He had to kick this down to the presidents of these schools. Who did their own research on this? I want to say, Ross, and I'm not a marketing 101 guy, but I think the biggest

overestimation in sports marketing when it comes to putting dollars in front of teams are jersey patches. If you've watched the NBA for any length of time, there are half the teams

that don't have anything at all, and half of them have moved from year to year to year with different ones. The rockets have had a bunch of different ones. The rockets have had... It was a rocket.

It's Memorial Herman, but it was something else too. that I can't tell you. I know there's been two. Rocket was the first one. Then it was Memorial Harmon? I thought maybe there was, it was a credit garment. That's right.

Three. So three in the last like five. Yeah. Now, you can always amplify your deal, which is I guess the end goal. But my streets tell me the ones I'm walking on that these these stretches are hard to sell. Yes. And that's the reason why I'm not going to look, there's some things that Brett Yormoy could certainly do better. Could he have gotten five more million dollars for it to split up among 16 teams?

Did he sell low? But it's, it's, I guess the question is, did he sell too low? And my thought is, with my experience knowing these jersey patches are not the easiest things to sell, maybe it was, you know what, this is found money, let's go put them on these jerseys and let's call it a day. That's what you have to ask yourself. Is it worth $1 million a school? to sell out because

this is not something that necessarily matters I guess to the bottom line but you sound kind of I don't want to use the word Mickey Mouse let me ask you this if it was a big deal to the other schools

in the conference wouldn't they have told your mark we'll handle our own deal go away leave us alone I don't know because it's the name of the conference the Monster Energy Big 12 conference

it sounds hokey It sounds, it's like it's, it's, it's lacking in status and prestige, I feel like. No one's going to call it. Say that, John? I'm agreeing with you. Yeah. I think that that's what they're going to try to call it. That's what we call.

We call it. We call it Dike and Park. We call it Minutankan Park. We call it whatever. You know, they call it the, they used to call it the Barclays Premier League because Barclays paid a bunch of money now, and now they don't. So, yeah, I would say most people still call it the Premier League. So you're right. It's probably still going to be big.

It's going to be printed as that. You're right about that. Every game, right? That's what the announcer going to say. This is for the Monster Energy Big 12 championship. Yeah, that's fair. But isn't the Big 12 supposed to be the... It sounds like...

It sounds like something from like the Dodgeball movie. For instance, you know? The Big 12 championship in years past has been the Dr. Pepper. I've never called it the Dr. Pepper Big 12 championship. Yeah, but it's the league now. That's different. It's not a game. And because it has been, I mean, it's worked for the, I don't know, the Nokia Sugar Bowl, stuff like that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So everything's had a sponsor. Well, sponsors are going to force the way on depending on your relationship with those particular schools. I can just tell you, I am a member of the Big 12. Now, if I'm working at U of H broadcast, which I will be doing again this year, if they say you have to say it, then I'm going to have to say it. Yeah. But when you and I have a Big 12 analyst on, if Sam Con from the Athletic joins us,

I'm not going to say joining us now covering the Monster Energy Big 12. I understand. And it doesn't matter at the end of this. It just sounds hokey. Is it hokey because it's hokey or is it hokey because the dollar amount is not great enough? It's hokey because it sounds like you're at the dirt track and it's the monster energy Big 12 race. Sounds like you're at a smaller operation. Regardless if it was Monster Energy or something else.

Well, I think Monster Energy probably is part of it. What did the SEC called themselves the Chick-fil-A southeastern conference? Yeah. Doesn't that sound weird? It does. Yeah. It sounds hokey. So that's what I'm saying. So put it on the others and it sounds hokey. But if I'm, if I'm Brett Your Mark, I'm not doing this without consent from their schools.

This is the Bank of America Big Ten conference. It sounds terror. It sounds, yeah. It doesn't sound as grandiose or as prestigious. I don't know what else to say. But the word Big 12 doesn't, you can't get money just to be. Yeah. No one's cutting you check just for you to say Big 12. They're asking they want to tagline. I know. So is it worth the million. It's a million now cost. 20 million per year. It's 20 million. A million per school. Million.25 per school. For the patches, on the surfaces, and the name of the conference. You know, I'm going to have to agree with the other people.

I think they did sell out. I think they could have got a lot more money for this. I don't know. Yeah, we don't know. If I would have said 2.5, would you have said, okay, everybody's got a price? I don't know. What's the threshold? I think five million of school sounds good.

That sounds. I'm sure that if you put that on the SEC schools with all the coverage they get. What's that $80 million? That's $80 million a year. Yeah, you're probably not getting $4. times whatever it was. I think it was company came to conference. Conference responsibilities are to always make them as financially sound as possible.

What can I do for a cash grab? And the question is, did your mark ask for $2 million a school? And then maybe Monster Energy said, shut your ball mess up, I can't do it. And then the schools, I'm sure you went to all the schools said, hey, is this worth selling out the name of our conference and patches and on the playing surfaces for a million. Point two five a year? Yeah. They said yes.

Not by himself. He had to get the majority of the conference would have said something. All right. Brian Bogosovic, after Ross tells you about. Here's Brian Bogusevic earlier today on 790, talking about the craziness of yesterday's win. Remember, the bottom three of the lineup, not much hitting. They drew some walks, and Astro's got a 6-3 victory.

Yeah, it's been an pretty incredible turnaround from where it was the first six weeks of the season and what it's been for the last six weeks or so. And the craziest thing to me is just how kind of methodical and consistent it's been. I mean, I think over the last 20-ish games or something, you know, the record's like 13 and 7 or 12 and 8 or something. And there haven't been any kind of winning streets, losing streets. It's just been like two out of three, two out of three, two out of three. And that's kind of been what they've been talking about all season.

You know, if we win series, we win series, we'll end up where we are. And it has proven that way, not just from a record standpoint, but it's proven that way from a how are we playing standpoint. Because it has been pretty consistent. Even when they have a bad game here or there, it seems like they turn the page really quickly and get back to playing good baseball. And the reality is, is the way the American League is slated this year, especially the West, you don't have to win 9 of 11. You can take these series and get right back in the race. And that's exactly what they're doing. I thought yesterday's game was bizarre for many reasons.

One, if I'm the nationals, I'm not happy. I walked as many people that I did and from the Astro side of things, especially with guys in the outfield who have really struggled to have a consistent bat. That, to me, was one of the underlying thoughts of the game yesterday was the ability to take some pitches and get on the base paths without having to swing and make contact with the baseball. No, absolutely. Every rally any of the Astros had was basically handed to them with a couple of base runners from walks and hit by pitches, but that's been the season for the nationals.

If you look at them, they've got one. of the best, arguably the best offense in all of baseball. They score a ton of runs. They hit a ton of runs. They steal a ton of bases. They do all these great things offensively. And the pitching is basically the complete opposite. They walk everybody. They give up a ton of runs. And that's why you have a team that's got maybe the best office in baseball and they're just kind of struggling to stay around 500. But, you know, kudos to the Astros because they took advantage of it. And it wasn't a couple of walks at the bottom. And then here's Yordon with the three run Homer. It was the guys at the bottom of the order getting it done and getting those runners in and executing at backs and

you know sacrifice flies productive outs they kind of grinded out six runs yesterday so imai gets in the trouble in the first inning with the bloody blister whatever that was and couldn't get you four and burrows get sent down uh and you know ergetti had two good months one lousy month and hopefully july is a turnaround for him as well there's a lot of it that that ross and i just shake our heads at daily, and I'm sure you do the same thing. How is this team where it is with the fact that starting pitching, macro view of this

is an underperforming starting five or in some case starting six? Yep, because they've been pretty consistently very good everywhere else. You know, the bullpen has been great for a huge chunk of the season now and they continue to get better and deeper down

there. The offense, you know, they had some ups and downs early, but they've really leveled off into being a pretty good offense. certainly when you have Yordon going out of his mind for an entire season that helps. They've been generally good on the bases. They've been generally good defensively. And they've kind of covered up for the fact that the same pitching has been inconsistent at best and at times has been, you know, kind of detrimental.

But I think once you get an idea of what you are as a team and know what you can rely on and what you have to cover up for, you can play a certain style. game. And you see it yesterday, I mean, that was a pretty quick hook on in my, I know that pitch count was running up there, but he's good to go to a hundred plus pitches and to get him out there in the low 80s. It was kind of like, okay, we've seen enough. Let's get it to the guys who we trust, who we can count on to kind of lock this thing down. So I think from the, you know, at the very least, you know what you have around that starting pitching now as you wait for it to maybe get a little bit better with some guys getting healthy. What went wrong with

Mike Burroughs because I mean even if you look at his last year his numbers with the pirates okay 394 ERA his whip was like 1.24 that's not you were the thinking was Elif is if he's that is a decent trade and he should be better here but he's been

much much worse yeah something something doesn't add up with him right if you if you make the Mike Burroughs scouting report you put it down on paper and you just kind of watch his pitches on video say without without the hitter or the result.

You would say that's pretty good stuff. That's doable. That stuff is going to work. I mean, fastball velocity, the change of the movement on the breaking balls. But it's been very hitable. And the last couple of outings that he had, there has not been very much swing and miss at all. There hasn't been, you know, uncomfortable swings. There haven't been the ability to get away with the mistake.

Anything he throws in the middle of the plate gets hammered. He makes a good pitch down below the zone. And guys still put a good swing. swing on that. And to me, from a hitter standpoint, that is all the signs of just they see the ball really well off of him. And they've got a long time to see it. They've got a long time to recognize and they're always putting good swings on it. And there's always got to be some element of deception in a pitcher's delivery, hiding the ball a little bit, not seeing it right out of the hand. And he's tinkered with his mechanics quite a bit over the course of the season. He's talked

about different arm slots. He's talked about landing more open or more closed. And when you start doing that, especially with your landing and kind of swinging your leg open and closed, you always risk opening up a little bit earlier and showing the ball earlier to hitters. And I think going down to AAA, working on some of those things and finding out where he needs to be from a directional standpoint, hopefully he can find a little bit more of deception because he's not getting the kinds of swings that he should based on what the stuff out of the hand is. So I think he's just lost a little bit of deception as well as, you know, had some command issues also. Brian Bogussevik was here on Sports Talk 790.

Last night, Brian Abrae, hitting 98.8 on the gun, a couple other fast balls at 98. Obviously, if the Astros are going to make a run, it would be nice for him to be a big part of it. Apart from the velocity, what did you see from him? Well, it was the velocity and it was the shape of the breaking ball. It was big, it was hard, it was more down than side to side, which is always a good sign for him. I thought it was maybe one of the better outings that he's had all season. And, you know, the fastball, the velocity, it wasn't just like one or two pitches that popped. It was pretty consistent throughout the outing.

So I don't know. You're not going to sit here and say, oh, he's back because he threw a pitch 99 miles an hour. But I certainly think that it's a huge step in the right direction. We'll see if he, you know, hopefully he gets run out there again today. and it looks the same and he can string together some outings. But even if he doesn't get all the way back to, you know, maybe best set up man in all of baseball what he was, if he can just be a guy that you can rely on to throw, you know,

a leverage inning or a seventh inning here or be a bridge in the sixth inning there, I think that would be a huge gain based off of what it was for the majority of the first half. Bogie, was the Jake Myers send down a wake-up call, not maybe wake-up call is a strange term, but I'll go with it anyway. For everybody, not just Jake, but nobody's safe in that waiver wire and that shuttle between Sugarland and Diken Park can happen almost on a daily basis. Yeah, I don't know if there's a wake-up call because everybody, everybody's very aware of what this business is. And it's very, you know, what have you done for me lately? And it's very much in the now.

But yeah, it's just a little reminder of the game moves forward and teams move forward. you know, if you're not producing or if you go through a stretch where you're struggling, nothing is really safe. And I think we saw that, you know, with Jake being sent down, I think we saw that with Christian Javier coming off of the aisle and being put, you know, directly into the bullpen. We'll see if he gets back into the rotation or not. But, you know, it's that time of the season where it's getting late, right? We're past the 90 game point and tough decisions have to be made and we have to make decisions

in the now and what can help us immediately. So, yeah, it's just kind of a little heightened sense of awareness that we're getting to that point of the season. That again was Brian Boga-Sovic with us every Wednesday. Now, normally on Thursdays we have Brian McTaggart, but he's traveling from Arlington or from Washington back to Houston. And he'll join us Friday on the way to Arlington. He's going to come home for a day, hang out with his family and then drive up to check out the Astros and the Rangers. So with that being said, we got believe it or not next, which is all things about Justin Verland. and we are applying today for

Prize Vault says a pair of tickets to see Motley Crew and their return to the Carnival of Sin's Tour with Tesla and Extreme on September the 11th of the Woodlands Pavilion. Tickets are on sale now at Ticketmaster.com. Again, if you want to go see Motley Crew September the 11th, it's all things

Justin Verlander. Next, unbelieve it or not. Thankfully, and finally I am socially distancing myself from Matt Thomas. Wait bye-bye to your cash cow because it's leaving the pasture. Now back to your I've missed you. Not really. That's rude. What's Craig doing right now? Maybe you're on a climb.

Not a good brisk, like a mountain climb? Yeah, he's a big hiker. That's beautiful. He has not worked since middle of April. It's good. Good for him. If somebody can find out what he makes, compared to what I make and get back to me. Don't you ask him? I'm not asking you. What?

Aren't you his best friend? Yeah, ask him. We're good friends. You know, and broskeys. You know each other for like 20 years. I know we have.

Well, ask them. So how would you, let's do it, 20 seconds of role play. I'll be, Matt, you be Craig. Okay. Hey, Craig,

how are you, buddy? Great. How don't you make Per Rockets game? None of your business. Five minutes left to go on the show. What should we do? We'll do.

We should play America's fastest growing sports radio game. Shall we simply call it B. Leave it or not and here's how it works. You're call 713-212-5-790. 7-1-3-212-5-7-90. Today's edition of Believe or not, is all things about Justin Verlander. I'll read your statement about JV. Statements completely utterly accurate.

You'll say this. Belie-Liv. If the statement is the moment, it'll say this. Two believer or nots in a row when you have pair of tickets to see Motley Crew on their return to the Carnival Ascins Tour. That'll be September the 11th at the Woodlands Pavilion. Tickets are on sale now at Ticketmaster.com. Garrett on 790,

Garrett, what was your favorite part of today's 10-2 radio show? That's a good question, man. Just the discussion in general. He's always good with you, man. Bless you. Justin Verlander's first contract with the Detroit Tigers was negotiated by his father. Believe it or not. I believe that.

You should. statement number two for the win. According to Spottrack.com, Justin Verlinder has the most career earnings of any pitcher in MLB history. Believe it or not? Oh, not. Oh, he does.

I'm sorry, Garrett, but thank you for listening. Mack Scherzer's second. His friend, his Brooskey, fellow teammate, or former teammate. Carrie on 790, are you ready to play, believe it or not? Believe it. Justin Verlander's brother Ben was drafted by the Detroit Tigers in a 14th round of the 2013 old MLB draft out of his same alma mater, Old Dominion. Believe it or not.

Same alma mater in a later draft. Believe it or not. Believe it. Statement number two for the win. Justin Verlinder was the cover athlete for the video game MLB the show 2008. Believe it or not? Believe it. No, Ross made it.

I'm sorry. I know. Michael on 790. Michael, you're ready to play, believe it or not? Believe it. Justin Verlander's Twitter bio is, My House Smells of Rich Mahogany, and I have many leather-bound books from Anchorman.

Believe it or not? Not. Believe it. It's been the way for a long time, Rossi. 7-13-212-5-7-90. Kenny on 7-90. Kenny, you ready to play, believe it or not? Believe it.

Justin Verlander first met his wife, Kate, while on the set of a commercial for MLB 2K12 video game. Believe it or not? Believe it. That's correct. Statement number two for the win. Justin and Kate broke up briefly in 2013 but got back together the next year and eventually wed and had children. Believe it or not? Not.

What do you mean? They're married. What are you talking about? And that was a layup. Jaime on 790. Hi, me, your favorite part of today's 10-2 radio show. Talk about that. Beautiful juice and atros.

Justin Verlander was named MLB's 2018 Marvin Miller Man of the Year following his charitable works with the victims of Hurricane Harvey. Believe it or not? Believe it. No, he's a nice dude, but he didn't get any reward for it. We gave away nothing today, right?

Zilch. Gave it three away, and then, you know. Nothing. So tomorrow, we'll do this again and then Friday. All right. Up next, it is Adam Wexler, and I believe, I don't know. Ross, you want to stick around and help him out? He didn't ask. I would. You're already halfway packed up, ready to go.

I'm walking out of here. Don't forget your vitamin C. See later. Or your vitamin D because you love that D. It is up next with the A team. Ross has the 10th inning show tonight. I know you do. You got to keep working. Sports Talk 7.9.