The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Brian McTaggart Talks Astros Sweep vs Rangers. " This Is The Astros Blueprint To Victory"

Episode Date: September 18, 2025

Brian McTaggart Talks Astros Sweep vs Rangers. "This Is The Astros Blueprint To Victory" 

1103 on Sports Talk 790. Matt and Ross with you. I'm going to spend 10 quality minutes with our good friend, Brian McTackard of MLB.com. We'll open up with a nice soft one for you here. Brian, you get the silver boot for a day. What are you going to do with it? Silver boot for the day? Well, I think I'll take it to Buckees and let people take pictures of it.

Because a few years ago when they won the silver boot in Arlington, the Rangers handed the boot to. the Astros and an Astros front office employee. Astros were going somewhere else. I was going home. So they asked me if I could take it home to Houston. And I told them I would stop at Buckees with it on the way. And it ended up I didn't have to take it. But I regret I never got that chance to take the boot to Buckees.

I mean, because I want to say if there's anybody that has seen as many silver boot games in person, it has to be you, right? I would think so. I mean, I think I've seen pretty much every one of them since probably ever. Yeah, I'm saying, I mean, I'm trying to give you your flowers here, my friend. Just say, yeah, I've been every one of them because I own this town baseball-wise. Yeah, well, I don't know about that. But it's been a weird series because the Rangers used to kill the Astros for years and years.

And now the Astros are won at nine in a row. And it's pretty hard to believe these teams now have the exact same record against each other in the regular season. So it's been a fun rivalry. All right. Before we get to the on-the-field play, for those that are just catching up, but I've been out of town a little bit the last couple days. but looking at your Twitter and the stories. What does your gut tell you about Yordaunt's injury situation, and what does your gut tell you about the Issaq Paredes potential return?

My gut tells me Paredes will return, and I think it could be soon, and Alvarez will not be back until playoffs at earliest, and I think they might have to go a little ways in the playoffs. I mean, what Joe Espada said yesterday pregame about Paredes all seem really positive if you're the Astros, and I think Joe even used the word soon that he could be back. So he even talked about, hey, can he run? You know, he's what two months removed from that hamstring.

Can he run? And Joe said, well, I'm not going to ask him to run. They're going to need him to swim the bat. If he grounds shortstop, you know, he's going to jog the first base. But if he hits a homer, you can jog around all the bases. So they're going to have to be smart with the way they use them. But, yeah, I think there's a pretty good chance within the next few days. have paredes in the lineup but i don't see ever returning before the playoffs at the earliest and even

then i i think it could be you know division series lcs before they have a chance to get him back and what about yorda on oh that's what i meant i meant yorda yeah i meant yorda i don't see yordaughan on returning oh okay i got you okay i got yeah sorry i got the names right all right i think it'll be it'll be a little bit of the player all right btaggart mlb.com with us here on the matt thomas show with ross uh so look, it's easy to say how'd they do it? Well, the bats showed up. And we have been trying to, at least Ross and I, for a better part of a month.

Is it going to be the pitching that's going to carry? Is it going to be the relief? Is it going to be the defense? Is it going to be the health of returning players that have been gone for a long while? To me, this felt like this was three games where the Astros offense just showed up. It's a kind of a up and down roller coaster team offensively this entire season. And right now, they're catching it at a good time. because the bats against really good pitching.

I mean, the Rangers line their rotation up for this series and the Astros beat some pretty good people to kind of push the Rangers further back on the wild card chase. Yeah, and I think that's the blueprint of how they're going to do this, if they're going to make a long playoff run. They're going to have to jump out to early leads like they did against the Rangers. They scored in the first inning every time. They never trailed in the series.

They're going to have to come up with clutch hits. This is their blueprint. victory and then just have their starting pitching and their relief pitching be just good enough. You know, I think they set the tone in Atlanta with those first two games. You know, remember they went into Atlanta and I think they had scored four runs in their previous eight games or something, eight games, eight runs in the previous four games. I mean, they were really struggling, scored 11 in that first game in Atlanta, did pretty well in the second game.

But I think that sort of set the tone for where they're at now and, you know, some really good at bats against the Grom in that first inning to get his pitch count up to 30, pitches. Jeremy Pena laying off, you know, a couple of sliders early. And then he was able to get a, you know, a double to get that inning going. You go back to September 6 when they faced DeGrom. DeGrom came out, pounding sliders, struck out three guys in the first inning on sliders. You can tell the Astros were not going to let him do that. And that's going to be crucial because they're going to face a lot of this caliber pitching in the playoffs. And even this weekend against the Mariners, it seems. So they're going to have to have that same discipline to folks. It seems like an X Factor, of course, is also going to be Zach Cole, oh for his last five, but we know he's got some lightning in his back. Keep asking you about your gut feeling. I mean, how do you think this plays out for him down the stretch? Yeah, I don't know, Ross. It's going to be interested because the kid's obviously pretty fearless, so I'm kind of anxious to see what he can do this weekend. I mean, I'm sure he's

going to be in the lineup once or twice, but then again, these are huge games, and he's still trying to feel his way through the big leagues. And, and, uh, And he's facing all this elite pitching when he'd barely been at AAA. I mean, all of a sudden, he's facing DeGrom and, you know, Luis Castillo and Brian Wu maybe tomorrow night. So this is the best pitching he's ever faced in his life. And he's having to figure out in games that matter hugely to the Astros. So, but I mean, he's not, he's not scared of anything. So, you know, I think the Astros will give him a shot, at least in one or two of these games and see what he can do.

Brian McTaggart Astros.com with us here on Sports Talk 790. On the pitching side, it feels like this time of year, we're always talking about how the playoff rotation is going to line up. So asking you about that, and specifically with Framber, if he's really good the next couple of starts, I think he's the two guy, if he's really bad. How much do you think he can slide? And what if he's just kind of somewhere in between?

Yeah, I still think if he has a couple of good starts under his belt, then, yeah, he's going to be the number two guy. You know, Alexander can't take anything away from what he did. I mean, they're winning every time he takes the ball, and that's what you want as well. And, you know, Kristen Javier has two pretty good starts under his belt now, six innings. So I think he's a guy that maybe at the back end of their rotation, if you need a four-starter, would be in there as well. But, yeah, I mean, I think the next two starts are pretty huge for Framber to see just where he will slot in in the playoff rotation.

I mean, a lot of it's going to depend on how they use them in that final week of the season. You know, do they have to use them in the final weekend? and Anaheim, if they have to win those games, then it looks like this thing definitely will go down to the wire. And, you know, that might decide for them how they line up their playoff rotation for the Wild Card series if, you know, if they have to, you know, use Hunter Brown or Fromba in the last couple of days of the regular season.

What do you see with maybe Paredes coming back, how much Jose Al-Tube DH will we see between now and the end of the season, regardless of whether or not Paredes can come back? I mean, I think if Paredes comes back, he's going to deached. I don't see. see him play in the field. I mean, he's not going to play third base over Correa. I mean, I guess he probably wouldn't DH every game. And then maybe that's where you can get Al-Tubei back in the D-H spot and off second base. But I don't think Perretti's going to, he's

obviously not going to play short, second or first. And you're not going to take Correa off third. So Perretis is going to be DH only. Will he play every game? It maybe depends how he feels, how he's swinging the bat. But Jose Al-Tube has played a lot more second base. in the second half of the season as he did in the first. And I think of the playoffs, that's what we'll see. I mean, I think it'll be interested if they have a lead in a playoff game. You know, do they pull Al-Tubei and put Urius or Dubon or somebody who's a little bit better in their defensively?

You know, that remains to be seen. But, you know, having that bat, Peredis in the lineup, if he can just work counts and use that pull power and hit the ball close to the way he did before he got injured, that could be a game changer. All right, size up the bullpen. it feels like to me, especially with the way Brian King has pitched really all season long and the fact that somebody guys have been hurt,

he's your eighth inning guy, Abraeu is your ninth. Generally give me your thoughts about what you've seen from this bullpen. I would say the undertone to me is it's really been heavily worked and you need somebody to give you one or two of those guys this weekend to give you some length to give these guys a rest, especially if they're going to have to play another bullpen game sometime next week out in California.

Yeah, they do. And I think the best thing that could happen for them is if they if they can run down the tigers and get the number two seed, which is now back in play. I mean, they're only a game and a half behind the tigers. And then you get that by. And now you're going to, you're going to rest everybody for five days before you start the division series. But, you know, they have a couple of guys in the bullpen now who can give them multiple inning outings. We've seen it, you know, from Colton Gordon. J.P. France can throw two or three in them. So, you know, I think guys like that could be important here over the next week if

if it's a blowout or even if it's not, if you just need somebody to give you two innings to make that bridge to get to King and get to a bray. You now have guys that are capable of doing that. But, you know, if they have to fight tooth and nail all the way down to next Sunday and use all these guys over the next weekend in Anaheim and they get on a plane and go to Seattle or go to New York or whatever, it could be really, really tough. So I know there was one Astros uniform member. told me he was watching the Detroit game closer than any other score because they feel

they can run down the Tigers and get that number two seed, which would be absolutely massive because you would get the days off and you'd open the division series at home. One more question about the pitching. AJ Blue Ball, do you think he could start a game in the postseason? Do you think he's just going to be a long relief? What type of role do you think he has down the stretch and in the postseason? Yeah, I don't think he'll be a starter. But yeah, I see him as long relief.

Somebody gets in trouble, fourth or fifth. You know, you bring in Bluebaugh to, you know, throw those three innings, throw 97, 98, get that bridge. He could be a huge weapon in the playoffs. He's a fresh arm. He's another one of these guys who's absolutely fearless. His stuff plays up in the bullpen more than it does when he was starting. So they don't have the, you know, the one-inning relievers they had early in the season with Sousa and Hater and Orte being out. But now they have these multi-inning guys.

And when you get to the playoffs, you can really. manipulate the way you use your bullpen where these guys are real weapons. So I think Blue Ball is going to be a big part of that. All right. In 30 seconds, give me your crystal ball thoughts about how this weekend's going to go down. Yeah, Astros, I think, are playing their best baseball since June. Mariners are not a good road team. I think they've had their hot streak.

I think the Astros win two out of three. That will set them up very well to go on a road trip against two teams that are out of it. So, yeah, I think the Astros win two out of three. get a little bit of a lead in first base and first place. And I think they win the division. I think they close this thing out. If they don't, they just have themselves to blame because after all they've been through, here they are with what, 10 games to go, nine games to go.

They're sitting here in first place. Nine. So they got a chance to control their own fate here if that's possible. Great stuff. As always, for them, look forward to hearing with you and Ross tomorrow night before the Astros Mariners series from Diken Park. Thanks. and we'll talk to you soon. Thanks, Taggs. Appreciate it.

All right. Thanks, yes. Brian McTaggart with us here on Sports Talk 790.