The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Brian McTaggart on Astros Season, Wild Card Exit & What’s Next

Episode Date: October 1, 2026

Brian McTaggart on Astros Season, Wild Card Exit & What’s Next

This is Matt and Ross in the morning. On Sports Talk 790. Our last regular Thursday morning visit with Brian McTagger, now we're going to get him on for breaking news if necessary. Not necessarily. We want to. We're going to miss Brian McTaggart. He can't be just spent all offseason going to University of Houston events,

or can you, Brian McTagher? Good morning to you. Well, I think I'm going to try, at least starting Saturday with the big UCF game. It is a big game. No question about it. As America is saying, Big and UCF and Houston, all together. Bring your raincoat and your galoshes, I think, is what you need. Could be a quagmire.

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

And it was just a disaster. You couldn't ask for a worse start. You know, they battled back and got close with the homers. But you just knew after that first inning that it just wasn't going to happen. And they didn't. What is, do you, in your mind, just being a baseball guy, is that? Does Hunter's Blazze, Blazé may be too strong of a term,

just ordinary season and then the obvious meltdown in the Astros front office, which still is very much incomplete. What does that make you think about how much they'll talk about a hunter in the off season in terms of trying to extend him? And again, I don't want to get too much into that, but it certainly is something to be discussed

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

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

Any chance that Joe's future can be determined by the new general manager or do you think that Jim Crane is going to make that decision fairly quickly? Yeah, I think that will come fairly quickly. I mean, I think whoever the new GM is is going to have a chance to hire a manager. But I do think that Jim will make a decision on Joe sooner than later. I think you almost have to. So it's going to be an offseason where, you know, if they do part with Joe, they're going to be looking for a GM and a manager.

But the GM is going to come first. And he, you know, if Joe's not back, the GM obviously is going to have, you know, the ride away. way to hire his own manager, which wasn't the case with Dana Brown because Joe was already here and got promoted. So I think there'll be a fresh start in a couple of those areas. But that's just one of many changes that's going to happen this offseason. I mean, I think we could see changes with the entire coaching staff.

Obviously, the roster is going to look a whole lot different. They're just in a spot now that probably haven't been in a long time. this organization just needs a reboot in a lot of areas. And it's going to be challenging to do financially. But it's going to start with the GM and maybe the manager and a lot of the coaching staff. And then you work from there. And with the general manager, Brian, we knew the instructions for Dana Brown. It was rebuild the farm system, stay as much as you can under the tax,

and then compete at the major league level. What are the instructions for the new general manager? basically the same thing because the farm system, while it does have some guys on the horizon, I mean, three or top four guys are teenagers, and one was just recently drafted if you're looking at the MLB pipeline list. So it still would be to rebuild the farm system, but also I just don't know what the instruction will be in terms of

trading away your major league guys, whether it be Pena or Walker or whomever, and still trying to stay competitive. Yeah, I think you've got to walk down both of those paths. I mean, I think they need to keep what they're doing. doing in the farm system, it's getting a little bit better. Like you said, most of their top talent is it, is it high A, maybe touching AA. Those guys are going to be coming a little bit quicker and maybe start to see some of those guys in 28 or 29, but certainly look at the AAA

roster and there's nothing that really excites you. And, you know, double A, there's a few guys. You know, she have won, the catcher obviously getting, he got up to AAA at the end of the year, but was at double A most of the year. But one of the ways they could have some talent, pretty quickly, like you mentioned, would be to make some trades. And I certainly would be willing to listen to offers for Jeremy Pena. You do have Correa coming back next year. I don't see a scenario where Correa, Paredes, and Pena are all on the team there. So do you, I think they certainly pick up Paredes' option because then they could trade him.

But if you trade, if you pick up Paredes' option and keep him, you trade Pena, put Correa short, you could get a return for Pena. You know, if you look around the league, you know, teams are looking for short stops of that caliber. I would consider trading Yiner Diaz, you know, defensively. He's not good, but he had such a good offensive year in the second half that maybe there's some value there to some other teams. Of course, you're going to have to go out and get another catcher, but a couple of your top prospects are catchers as well. So there's just a lot. There's just a lot.

This is going to be a difficult job for any general manager to come in because there's, a lot of things you have to do. And you have, you know, payroll limitations. It was still a top, but I think they were the 14th highest payroll. So it's still a top half in the league. But yeah, it's going to be an interesting offseason for sure. Brian McTaggart, Astros.com, MLB.com with us here on Sports Talk 790. And what about the rotation?

Going into this year, we were like, hey, you know what? They got a lot of options, but a lot of those options washed out. and they will have another offseason of a lot of options, but no sure things. Do you think would they look into the free agent market or trade market as well for somebody that can be a true number two behind Hunter Brown? Yeah, I think they have to. I mean, one of the reasons on Dana's gone is because, you know,

the misfires last offseason, they added all this pitching depth. And that was really the focus of the entire offseason, was adding pitching depth, trading for burrows, signing Emi, Ryan Weiss, you know, on and on. And those boots just didn't work out. I mean, you know, Burroughs could, you know, I'm not giving up on Burroughs at all. I mean, he could still be a guy who could contribute. But they need at least a couple of quality starting pitchers.

I'm not talking about, you know, high-end guys. They just need a couple of guys you can put in the middle of the rotation. And maybe they could trade for one. And, you know, maybe the paying your trade is something that they could get somebody like that. Maybe they can sign somebody in free agency. but they have to upgrade their pitching. They absolutely need more pitching depth. I mean,

the end of the year with a bullpen game on Sunday to win the division, they started the playoffs with a bullpen game, and then basically they had one last night because Hunter Brown doesn't last the first inning, and then they have another bullpen game. You're just not going to go deep in the playoffs if you're pitching six, seven pitchers every night. It's just not a formula for success.

So they have to find a way, again, to try to upgrade this pitching staff and do it better than they did last year because a couple of those guys, two or three of those guys they brought in were just complete flops. So if any of your fans happen to see you at the U of H game this Saturday, and they say, hey, Brian, are the Astros going to retool

or are they going to... Rebuild, rebuild, blow it up, blow it up, any of the different terms you may hear. I know retool sounds cool because you've got some core pieces. Obviously, Yordon, is that core piece, and Hunter Brown, and you've still got Carlos Cray, hopefully it'll be back. But with so many spots, improving of the starting rotation,

the outfield's got two-thirds of its spots that need to be improving. Frankly, Cam's got to improve from year to year. It feels more like a reorganization, rebranding, whatever you want to do is compared to just adding a piece or two because a piece or tool means a retool. When you're starting over from scratch, that's five or six spots. And that's what this Astro team needs, don't you think? Yeah, I think they have a lot of holes, and they do have a core of players, like you mentioned, you know, the Pena's, Correa's, the pitching staff, you got Hayterback, Brown.

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

But, you know, when they rebuilt it 15 years ago, you know, they had all these guys coming up. They had Bregman and Crea and Springer and, you know, Singleton, although he didn't work out. But McCullors was just talent after talent. And those guys aren't here yet, maybe in a couple of years. years they have that. So I think the only way you try to retool is you got to trade from your core, a couple of those players, and then try to get, you know, maybe some of the higher end prospect or two from another team. And maybe those guys can help you sooner than later. If you were flying the wall in the room between Jim Crane and Joe Espada, if they meet in

and say the next 24 to 72 hours, what's that conversation going to be like, you think? If you were able to get in there with them? Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, you know, Joe was asked point blank yesterday if he wants to be back and he says he doesn't. Of course he does. I mean, there's only 30 of these jobs and, you know, Joe's this year. But if I'm Joe, I'm like, how are we going to improve this roster? I can't manage this team again. If I'm plucking guys out of Mexico, the Mexican League, you know, like Nelson Velasquez to start a playoff game. If we have a guy who was independent ball, not that long ago, Josh Hendrickson, pitching key innings in a playoff game. If we're putting a rookie in center field, Lucas and Lucas Spence, if we're throwing, you know,

rookies out of the bullpen like, you know, Uola and other guys, I mean, it's just, it just was not a formula for success. My question, if I'm a spot, is like, how are we going to move this roster in the next year or two? Because I don't think, I don't think anybody who managed his team this year

could have gotten more out of them just with the roster they had. I mean, look at the bottom half of the batting order on a night-to-night basis. It was just a couple. You had a couple of guys who weren't really big leaguers in that batting order every day. How are you supposed to win with that? That would be my biggest question is how are we going to improve this roster and how quickly can we do it? Yeah, and part of that, you kind of hinted it out there.

Brian would be the bullpen. I mean, that's been a hallmark of this great run. The Asher's been, too. I mean, Abraeu is gone. I don't know who the seventh and eighth inning got. is for the Astros next year, and where do they come from? You know, the bullpen did a pretty good job for a majority of the year. Losing Oakert was a big blow for sure.

You know, the Abraeu, the month or six weeks where he was bad, you know, that hurt. But bullpen's one of those things that you can fix pretty quickly. I mean, you can go out and sign a couple of guys on one-year deals who can be good for you. So I don't think that's as big as a concern. It's starting pitching depth, of course. That's harder to address and just the holes in the lineup. You mentioned the outfield, probably one of the worst defensive offensive outfields they've had. You know, left field.

You rotated guys through there and no one was the answer. You know, center field, they're still looking for a center fielder since George Springer left. I mean, they're just run through guy after guy. Maybe Lucas Spence was a guy. I don't know. We thought that last year was Zach Cole. Oh, Zach Cole's going to be the guy. So far he hasn't been.

those to me are bigger concerns than the bullpen.