The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Brian McTaggart on Astros Loss: “There’s No More Wiggle Room”

Episode Date: September 17, 2026

Brian McTaggart on Astros Loss: “There’s No More Wiggle Room”

Tags, good morning to you, what's going on? Morning, guys. How are you doing? I'm good. We were having a little conversation about Cam Smith. How deep do you think the front office of the Astros will have in terms of thinking about Cam Smith's contract for the foreseeable future in this off season coming up? Well, I mean, they have him under contract for four more seasons, so I don't think he's going anywhere. It's weird because, you know, he has a series like he did in Philly and you think he's turned. turning the corner and then he goes

a week without a hit. I mean, he's sort of done this all season. So, you know, I don't think they're ready to give up on him yet, certainly. He's only 23 and he's a great defender. So he'll be back. He'll be back in the mix and, you know, maybe he can find it, make some adjustments and

see if he can, like, get it together. But, uh, I don't think it's a case where they're going to cut him in the offseason or anything just because you know, he's not making any money and he he's got a lot of tools. So, Well, the reason why I brought that up is because the Astros have had history in a few cases of actually buying some arbitration years out and extending him thinking, you know what, let's get him on the cheap right now. That's the reason why we brought that up.

Yeah, I don't really, I don't think we'll see that yet. I mean, I don't think you'd have to have a better season and maybe you have those conversations. I got you. All right. Yesterday was, as I was listening to the game and watching it and reading your tweets, it was sobering, watching you run through the various stats of, players. It's been Feaster Famine, obviously, for 152 games, but man, oh man, the

last couple of games in particular, if not for Jeremy Pena, and I'm talking about the part of the game that mattered, like all of game one and some of last night, when this team goes in slumps, it's prolific, it's cam, it's, well,

the other guys are, you know, I think are four players, but it's Christian Walker. I mean, we're seeing some prolonged slumps right now from some of the guys that at some point had some hotter parts of the season. Yeah, Christian Walker's an O for 19. I think Cam's an O for 15 or 16. It's tough to watch.

What was the inning that had the first two guys got on with singles? And you had the Walker, the can't came up. I mean, it was boom, boom, boom, three cookouts, and that was it. I mean, it's just, this offense has been bad since the beginning of August. If you look at the numbers since August 3rd, they have one of the lowest Oaks. PSs and baseball. And that's also the time that Peña and Alvarez sort of have went into the tank a little bit offensively.

You know, Peña looks like he's coming out of it, hitting the ball all over the field last night, last couple of nights. But he has six other 12 hits the last two games. And like you said, a couple of those hits were guys, you know, came off the bench late. You know, Varsal got a hit after it was too late. That's just not going to get it done. I mean, that just did not look like a playoff team last night. offensively they have to find a way to get going in.

I think Joe's in a tough spot because you look at this roster and some of the guys he's running out there and it's just not a good roster. The bench isn't good. They've got to have Alvarez and Tanya carry this offense and hope a couple of other guys step up. But if they're not doing it consistently night in and night out, this is what you get.

I jokingly made a reference. earlier in the show, Brian, to Dan Hannigan leaving for Wake Forest and then the offense going into a tank. I mean, how much of that, I guess if it matters even at all, but also just kind of a weird even as it is, even

it has zero impact, kind of a bizarre move to have your offensive coordinator who a lot of people like leaving for a college job in the middle of the season. Yeah, you have to wonder if that has an impact. I can't sit here and tell you how tangible that is. I mean, I know loosely what Ann did on a day-to-day basis, but the players seem to really respect the information he got.

But there's also a part of the coaching staff that thinks, you know, we get too much information. We need to simplify things. You've heard that from Joe Spott of the last couple of days when we were talking about Pena and Alvarez taking BP. Just trying to make things more simple. And so sometimes you can just overwhelm yourself with stats and. Dan was a very, very smart guy. But yeah, as soon as he left, the offense has gone downhill. Just sort of like as soon as Strom got here, the starting pitching has been a lot better.

So I guess you can't say there's nothing to it. There probably is something to it. Brian McTaggart with us here on a sports talk 790, covering the Astros for MLB.com. How safe is Yordon Alvarez's MVP case? I think it's slipping. I mean, you have Caminero hitting back-to-back walk-off on a team that's probably going to finish with the best record in the American League. His overall numbers are really, really good as well. So I think he's lost a grip on it here.

I think it's probably 50-50 at this point with, you know, with Camerro having a lot of momentum. So, you know, he sort of lost his grip on the Triple Crown as well. that's hard to imagine a month ago that would be saying that because both those things seemed like a lock. He had a huge lead and an average homers and RBIs and now he's, you know, I think he's still ahead

in average maybe, but barely. So, yeah, unless he has a strong couple of weeks here, I think he might end up losing both of those things. Brian McTaggart, MLB with us here on Matt and Ross in the morning on 790. All right, so Atlanta

comes in, Kansas City, hopefully get the series victory today. The Braves are coming in, and then you have this vaunted trip. What a, I don't want to say tumultuous, but a lot of drama coming up for the next 10 days. And you've been in the stadium the last couple days. The building feels kind of dead. And I don't know if that's the demeanor of the players. If the players feel that, I know you feel that.

I know you feel that. You just said it. I want them to win the division. I want them to go to the playoffs because this American League is a hot match. right now, as we've talked about Brian, but after the third spot in the lineup, I don't have a lot of confidence. Left on base category is another thing that just drives me crazy right now. Yeah, 0 for 9 last night.

It just seems like it's pop up, pop up, strikeout, pop up. It's just not a good lineup. And yeah, the crowds have been light. I think they're announcing about 28,000, but the lower bowl is, you know, got tons of empty seats and it's just not a lot of not a lot to get excited about it frankly it's not really it's not really fun to watch i mean uh when the you know when they're they're struggling to score two runs against the royals so um you know they're tied now so

luckily for them they have the tiebreaker but any wiggle room was gone and this it's starting to feel like last year when they were just really scuffling alvarez was out of the lineup you know the last couple of weeks and at the end of year they had to go to Sacramento and went to the Angels and I can't remember that you know they they had to win I think both those series and everyone said well those two teams are bad they'll do that and they didn't

and starting to feel that way now and you got the Braves this weekend who are really good or they're going to be throwing good pitching and they're playing for seating and home field advantage so they got to hope they go on the road next week and if they're still in the lead over the Rangers or at least tied and have this tiebreaker.

It'll give them a good shot. But I think these next four games at home are pretty crucial. They have to try to win a couple or three of these. And I'm not so sure that that's going to be the case. Painting with a broad brush here. Give me this state in your mind about the pitching staff right now in terms of starting pitching, still a lot of holes in trying to figure out who's playing whom. And then more importantly, in terms of our guys getting some rest,

a little downtime. You have it a couple of Monday off days, but still a lot of usage among those guys the bullpen. Yeah, the Monday off days help with the bullpen. I mean, you know, Hayter and a Bray who didn't pitch last night, and both of them were pretty efficient the night before, so, I mean, I think they could come back and pitch

the next couple of days if they had to, so I don't think you're in terrible shape there. You know, the rotation is what it is. You got a Ola going tonight as the opener, then you'll get peckle. And that worked out pretty good last time, so, and the rotation is pitched pretty well for the most part.

but yeah I mean as far as the bullpen goes they could use a game where they you know they go out and they win 10 to 1 and you know they throw blanco for a couple innings and email for a couple and give these guys rest because I think going into that last six games just with the way the offense is and scoring runs they're going to have to use their bullpen a lot and they're going to have to use their high leverage guys a lot because every out is going to matter more than it did in the first 150 games.