The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - FOX’s Sports PxP Adam Amin Joins Giving National Perspective On The Astros & American League As A Whole

Episode Date: August 21, 2025

FOX’s Sports PxP Adam Amin Joins Giving National Perspective On The Astros & American League As A Whole

A very underrated sports theme for a television network. It's baseball night in America. And tonight on Channel 26, you will see one of the nation's finest broadcasters. Now, he does primarily NFC games because he works for Fox on the NFL Sunday. But when he ever does a Texan's game, Adam Amin's going to be with us for like two hours in the show. Adam, how the hell are you? I'm very much looking forward to finally doing a Texans game and getting to sit down with you for two hours.

I know. I cannot wait. You are the television voice of the Chicago Bulls. You are on baseball night in America tonight for the Astros against the Orioles. And, of course, every Sunday you can see him on Fox NFL Sunday. Adam, I got to be honest with you, you're running into a game. If you saw this game on your schedule back in April, you're probably thinking, okay, Astros Orioles might be a potential ALCS matchup.

down the road. Orioles have fired everybody. They've traded off players. They're playing okay since they're terrible first two months. Meanwhile, the Astros don't score runs anymore. So kind of a, not what you thought was going to be matchup when you first got your schedule. Yeah, I didn't think we would run into the Astros in a week where they've scored, what, 12 runs and have given up more than 50. I did not think that that was going to be the case. But I also didn't think this would be an Astros team that would have Carlos Correa. And I could go back into my 20, 23 notes to learn, you know, remember everything I had about him the last time we saw Correa when he was playing for the twins. So it's a very different

looking Astros team that I was expecting. It is a significantly different Baltimore team that I was expecting. I know I don't I don't know what to think about the Orioles, but I still feel very, I everybody we run into during our travels who talk about the Astros. It's the old model of consistency. And this is one of those rare times that I've hopped in. into a Houston game and thought, this is not like the Astros I'm used to seeing. So, yeah, in April, this is not what I would have expected to be seeing. But it's got weight to it, right? This is a game that's got some impact to it for Houston, obviously.

Yeah, with the game and a half late game lead, especially with Seattle not winning any games as well. So that's been a good sign. Let me ask you this from a national perspective because you do get a chance to do different, call different games. And one of the complaints from my audience is when an ESPN or an Apple will come in is that the cheating scandal comes into. to play almost every single national broadcast. And there is a fair amount of resentment for it. Not that the city of Houston, Adam, knows what the Astros did. But it's almost like a situation of how many times are we going to hear this?

And I don't think you would ever intentionally do it. But I just think when someone comes in and doesn't see a team a whole lot, it's a narrative that comes into play. What is your general thought now that we are, you know, eight years removed from that? And does that ever get up in conversations when you're sitting down in a production meeting saying, hey, do we bring up Kareas yester years? Do we bring up the fact that El Zayal Tubei still gets booed everywhere he goes and plays? I think that's the reason behind it is the booing,

because it's impossible not to associate those things, right? And I think for most audiences, again, we are calling games for a national audience, which means essentially we're calling them for both sides. Imagine if, you know, I get to imagine this because I'm the local guy for a team in the NBA, as you mentioned. So I hear it on the rare occasions, and those occasions are rarer and rarer for the Chicago Bulls to be on national TV. But I think the occasions where the Bulls are on national TV, you know, we get tweets. Stacey King and I, my partner, we're like, oh, these guys don't know this about this team or they're always talking about the other team or they're biased. I'm like, no, that's Dave Pash.

He's a good friend of mine who's really good at his job and called me two days ago to ask me about the Bulls. like he knows what he's doing, he knows what he's talking about. I think it's little things that start to connect. And I understand where a local audience would get frustrated by it, but if you're calling games for the national side and suddenly you're hearing fans boo Jose Al-Tuve, it's impossible not to mention it because it's coming through on your TV. And if we've learned anything on the national TV side, I think baseball is an exception to this in a lot of ways, not fully, but it is an exception.

lot of ways. Most sports that we cover nationally, fans don't know much about the teams. And I want to believe that fans know so much more than they ever have. And that's true. But it's only a certain percentage of fans. Most people that are tuning in and flipping through their channels and landing on a Fox baseball game or a ESPN NBA game or whatever it may be, whatever the case ends up being a Fox NFL game, like we're really introducing a lot of things to fans who are watching this So I think that's why the natural tendency is to just explain the most basic concept. But I have been in production meetings. We covered the Astros a couple of years ago in the playoffs against Minnesota in that series.

And I remember saying like I don't really feel like we got to talk about it. It's not going to be a subject. And I think the only time we mentioned it is when the Astros were about to clinch the series. I think it was like the seventh inning or something like that. It's like, you know, just as kind of a roller coaster of the last at that point, or seven years. I think now, like, it is further and further away. But I went to a Toronto White Sox game earlier this year, and fans are still booing George Springer. Like one dude, and it's a light crowd in Chicago, but one dude is still booing George Springer. And you can hear

it throughout the ballpark. So for certain fans, it does still mean something. I don't know how much it means, how much of the vitriol is real and how much of it is manufactured. I'd probably lean much further towards manufactured at this point. It is something that I got tired of talking about. I can't really imagine a scenario where we might talk about it tonight other than Correa and Altuve getting booed by Baltimore fans when they show up to hit. That's probably the only connectivity we would feel. And if it's drastic, yeah, I probably would have to mention it. But it's not something that I'm going to go, let me go into my notes and deep dive the 2017. How many times can I mention Jeff Luno in this?

Like, that's not what I want to do. That's not what I care to do. But I think that's the general thinking about this stuff. And I know that was a long answer, Matt, but that was kind of the thing is fine. It was very thoughtful. And I think people, and I'm going to talk to my audience here directly, do you guys understand that? I think that makes a lot of sense.

And so I just felt like it was needed to be asked. And Adam is so talented and thoughtful that I knew you'd give it the responsible answer on that. Adam Amean, Fox Sports. He'll be doing the baseball night in American game tonight. Astros and the Orioles. You'll see him on Fox NFL Sunday. And you're also, and I didn't even know this. You're quite a DJ.

Am I correct on this? I guess your mileage may vary, but yes, I do perform as DJ in Chicago and various other places. So do they ever go, you're at this club, and you do this. And you're like, wait a minute, I just saw him call a game against a Bucks two hours ago. Is that how it turns out your life? What's going on with it? that. Well, you know, oddly enough, so for some background, when I was 13, my brother bought me a pair of turntables and a mixer. And I'm from Chicago, the birthplace of house music. So it was

just something that was part of your childhood, honestly, growing up either in the city or in the suburbs. And I love the music so much that I started DJing. And then that became a profession of mine up until the point I got hired at ESPN when I was 24. That was 14 years ago. So I just stopped doing it. It's a creative thing that I really enjoyed doing. And I think house music, I've been reading more about this, is like one of the fastest growing music genres in the world. Kids that are going to college or in college now are listening to like remixes of the songs that I used to listen to when I was a teenager. And maybe this just makes me sound super old, but it felt really good that there was some connectivity there. I got back into DJing a couple of years

ago. And then this year, one of the fun events, we had a Cubs Red Sox game in July for Fox on a Saturday night in Chicago. And one of my buddies is a DJ at one of the clubs down the street. He asked me to play a set after the game. And guess who came along? A.J. Persinski and Ken Rosenthal, 62-year-old, venerable baseball reporter with a bunch of Emmys and awards on his mantle, Ken Rosenthal, came out to a club in Chicago to stand on stage me while I DJed during, you know, after a Cubs game. So that's that's the type of stuff that once in a while, like we get to do and people do kind of look at me oddly and go, aren't you the, didn't you just do the, so we'll see what

happens. I'm doing it tomorrow. We've got, I've got Bears Chiefs tomorrow night in Kansas City and then I'm DJing at a club in Kansas City tomorrow. Are you a better DJ than Kenny Albert? I think so. I don't know if I want to necessarily challenge him, but I'd like to believe that I can do this man.

No, I think he's got six games to call tomorrow. He won't have time to DJ anything. The very talented Adam Mean is. If he did have time, he probably would end up being better than me anyway because he's just the most versatile dude on the planet. That's awesome. Adam Amin with us here from Fox Sports. You, as a football broadcaster, you get a chance to visit with teams the day before.

You get to low little intricacies about not necessarily play calls but strategies. Do you get that on the baseball side or two? or is it just because it's such a daily grind that you're not going to be able to get a whole lot of that inside dirt that you would potentially get on a Saturday before a Sunday football game? Usually it's a little bit more nuanced stuff, and it often just relates to the starting pitcher. It's like, you know, today we might go in and say, well, what is Brandon Young, what did Brandon Young do well against you guys the other day that, you know, you're looking to attack or what stuck out on Saturday? You know, that's a question we might ask to Joe.

You know, we might go into Tony Mansellino's office and say, how do you attack? you know, hitter X, hitter Y. I think it's a little bit less about strategy because of the day-to-day grind of it. And so much happens in terms of variables in the first, now like five innings of a game, and you're really getting into this a lot faster because it's not like 15 years ago, even where you'd go, all right, well, we got our number two pitcher going. So I'm expecting to throw him for seven innings today or six innings today. the wheels have to start moving so much earlier that it's impossible to predict for managers when they're going to start making moves.

I think we ask about tendencies. We ask about recent successes. We ask about development. And I think that's a little bit different on the football side where we are going in and saying, this is the match. You're playing Minnesota. You're a defensive coordinator and you're preparing for Justin Jefferson. And by the way, the answers for a lot of those defensive coordinators often end up being the same thing.

well, we've got this coverage for this, we've got this coverage and these down in distances, but guess what? He beats it anyway. So that's when you hear the cliched stuff. It's a matter of execution. We have to execute better. Basically just meeting my guy has to be better than yours. My guy has to have a better step than yours. He has to think one step ahead than the other guy, and he's got to jump around. And guess what? 50% of the time, he's probably going to get beat over the top. Like, that's how a lot of the candid coaches in the NFL will tell you. And I think that's, we're we lean. We lean more towards like specific strategy for that day, whereas the day-to-day grind of

baseball does have certain things that you can talk about because of the starting pitchers and some tendencies and maybe who's available and who's not in a bullpen. And we kind of have to put the puzzle together as the game goes on in baseball. So we're going to get probably at least four to five Seinfeld references for Jason Alexander tonight. Is that to feel fair? We got to think about how many we can muscle in. Here's the other thing, though, too. I'm watching the marvelous Mrs. Maisel right now. I don't know if you've ever seen that show. I am a, my girlfriend

turned me on to it. I'm a huge stand-up comedy nerd, so she turned me out of the show and I'm like, this is a great show. Jason Alexander plays a small role in the show. So like, I keep forgetting the man has range. I don't want to just pigeonhole him in Tucson. That's the one thing I got to keep in mind.

Last question for you live in Chicago. Kyle Tucker is a former Houston Astro. He's been wearing it the last week or so. What's going on with him in the north side right now? Well, there's a, I think I read some potential injury issues over the course of this, this last month. He's been playing through some injury. The offense just hasn't been there as of late. Yeah, fractured hand, I guess, fractured right hand in June.

And he's been playing through it for the last month plus. So you can tell that the offense had kind of tailed off. He'd been great even when I saw him in July. But I think it's probably starting to become more and more of a factor. And listen, the Cubs have hit a skid that many teams do. the Astros may be a team that can sympathize right now, where your best hitters who have had a track record, whether it's short or long, of being relatively consistent and relatively productive, just have hit a slump all at the incorrect time and all at right around

the same time. And the guys that are getting on base aren't getting driven in. And that's been a prolonged issue now for the better part of a month. And during this time, look at the Milwaukee Brewers. They've just bulleted their way into first place. I know the Cubs won the last couple of games and what is a very important. series. But the whole talk in Chicago all year, all year has been got to sign, got to re-sign Tucker, got to re-sign Tucker. And my general thought was, I don't know if the

Cubs front office has a track record of actually pulling the trigger and making the move, not necessarily that they don't want Kyle Tucker, but are they willing to pay upwards of around four to maybe $500 million for a long-term contract for them. I was never convinced of it. Now you're really going to get people with Milwaukee surging the way they have. The Cubs flirting with more of a wild card slot than anything else. And again, anything could happen in this last stretch, 40 games or whatever it is. But I still feel like the Cubs front office hasn't shown the track record to resign Kyle Tucker. And my gut feeling at the beginning of the year, my gut feeling towards the end of this year is probably going to be the same,

where I would imagine Kyle Tucker is going to test the market. Not to say he won't come back to Chicago, but I think he's going to end up testing the market. All right, I've kept you too long, but I've got to give you the last question on this. Who is your gut feel feeling? Not that you can change your mind. who's one in the American League? It looks really wide open right now. It does. It looks tremendously wide open. And at various times this year, I've said the Yankees, the Astros and the Tigers all have a shot.

If the Astros are healthy in a month, I feel really good about Houston. I really do. If they have Yordaun Alvarez, if they have, you know, Jake Myers back, if they get some reinforcements for their offense, I don't, I think this is a bad slump. I don't panic when it comes to the Astros. I rarely ever have. I think the Yankees are still very talented. Same deal. Their reinforcements need to get back.

Judge isn't fully healthy yet, dealing with the elbow. Stanton had been in and out of the lineup for most of the year. I still feel good about Detroit. I know the Astros just saw him. I know it was a rough series. But Detroit hit a skid a few weeks ago. I think I still lean mostly towards Detroit. In a big series, I still lean towards Houston.

I, God, it's really hard to choose. It's really hard to choose because it's been such a mishmash in the American League this year. But yeah, I think Detroit and Houston are the two teams on leaning towards it.