The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Joe Espada Addresses Astros Recent Pitching and Offensive Struggles

Episode Date: May 20, 2026

Joe Espada Addresses Astros Recent Pitching and Offensive Struggles

10.30 here on Sports Talk 7.90, and we certainly do appreciate our next guest, Joe, Spotted, joining us here. This is kind of cool in some respect. I know the reason why a day later because we didn't join us yesterday, but we're catching you two hours prior to game. Skip, how are you this morning? I'm doing well, guys. Sorry about yesterday. Busy during that time of our call. But good. All good. Beautiful day here in Minnesota. Opportunity to win a series today.

Hey, first of all, congratulations on the victory yesterday. I got to get one small thing on the way. Do you know what a juicy Lucy is? No. I win a dollar. It's a hamburger that's famous in Minneapolis, St. Paul. Next year, you get to go enjoy that. Hey, let's get to business now.

I'm going to, again, I know that you told Jason around noon yesterday that he was going to start, and maybe that's part of the reason why you couldn't turn is because you had to get logistics going on that. Tell me about, if you can as much, about when Lance finally came to you and said, hey, I'm trying to work through this, but I just can't give it a go today. And, you know, we've been talking throughout the week, you know, after every start, I check on all our starters and want to hear from them the next day, how they feel, you know, just to check in, right? You know, want to hear anything about soreness or anything about their performance.

We talk about their start, things that they did, things that we could, you know, try to do different, just checking in. and now I was checking with Lance. And, you know, he normally, after every start, you know, he takes a while for his body to flush the, the, the, just the soreness of every start. And the last couple days, he just wasn't feeling great. And then yesterday morning, he called me and we talked. It's like, Joe, you know, just this week, I haven't been able to flush things out like I'd done in the past. And then I make the decision to say, you know what, why don't we, you know, let's just take the day.

day. I'm going to scratch you. Let's go see the doctors and let's just try to get it right. And, you know, Jason was here, ready to go and deliver a great outing for us. We were just talking about Lansing. And Joe, you have been through, as a manager, you have been as a coach, hundreds and hundreds of players. You've got a guy that's in Lans who's been throwing the baseball since he was able to walk and talk. Obviously, his dad played major league baseball. He gets to the pinnacle. He helps the Astros win a World Series, and the body just breaks down. I mean, this is part of you being a manager, part of you being a friend,

and part of you trying to just, I guess, be an amateur psychologist for a guy that has to, was hoping to have a healthy spring, which he did have, and gave you starts every fifth day, to have to have this kind of conversations, especially with all the other guys you've had to deal with. I mean, this is a lot for him to handle, and personally for you to handle this right now. Yeah, yeah, you know, I've, I, I've been here for nine seasons now, and I've been around these players for a very long time,

and I've seen how they grinded and competed and put their bodies in stress, you know, for years for the organization and for our city and for one another. So we play a ton of games. We have been postseason. We have been in World Series. So there's wear and tear that will happen to our players, you know, players like, like Altuve and players who have, you know, Jeremy, who's been in Wall Series since the rookie, right? So they're going to go through moments where their body as humans, they're going to get fatigue and injuries will happen. And, you know, that's the case with Lance.

You know, I remember in 17 when I was on the other side with the Yankees and Lance, you know, through that terrific game where he threw 20-something breaking balls in a row and we couldn't figure him out. like he's been competing at a high level for a very long time and injuries are going to happen. So having this conversation with these guys throughout the season and needing to give them breaks to get back to somewhat normal, it's not easy. And their daily conversations trying to get these guys through games. But it's part of the business and, you know, I enjoy figuring things out with them. You know, I, I, I, I'm, this is a family and I feel like I've been, you know, their fathers for a very long time. So we sit here and we have conversation and try to pitch it together and continue to grind through this. What's it been like for you, Joe?

Because I know if me personally, I would be like, how does this keep happening? Why me? And you've had to work through it. And last year, it was so bad. And somehow this year feels like it's, it's almost gotten like worse. How are you handling this staying resilient and, and, and, you're, you? going out there and just trying to do your best. You know, I try to, I don't ask that question, why me?

I try to stay present and this is a situation that we are all in. It's not about me. It's about the team, my players. It's been very difficult because when we are healthy, we know how good of a team we are, but I also see that despite all these challenges and all these injuries, we fight games from first place with 112 games to go. You know, that's a sign of resiliency. That's a sign of toughness of grit that this team always had. And I always remind them, my guys, despite all this, look where we at. Let's continue to play through this. So once we throw our players back,

we could put ourselves in a position to make a run. So us feeling sorry of me, feeling, oh my God, what this keeps happening. It's not going to help solve our problems. It's not. So it's figuring out today, helping out young players, put them in a position where they can compete and win today's game, win today's, you know, innings of bats are pitching matches. Like we can see, we focus on the small victories that we can gain through our day to at the end of the day, at the end of the day, we could be shaking hands like we did last night. Ashares manager, Joe Espada, with us here on Sports Talk 7-9. Altuve, unfortunately, going down with the oblique injury.

And specifically on the obliques, we've seen it not only with you guys, but all over baseball. What are you guys talking about and working with trainers and players? Because how much of that is the emphasis on bat speed and kind of the new age baseball to where you are seeing these oblique injuries pop up all over the place? Yeah, yeah. You know, this, we all been asking the thing,

question is happening throughout the league. The way we try to do it is we're trying to control the volume of swings the guys take like in the cages, right? You know, like BP on the field, we try not to have a ton of those. Just monitor volume where we tell our players, we tell our hitting coaches, guys go in there, get ready, get warm, we do our video presentation on today's pitcher, guys take X amount of swings. and let's control the volume. And we're asking the hitting coaches,

we're asking the players, like, you take what you need just to get ready for that game and get out of the case, especially when we go through long stretches of game, right? Limiting the amount of swings, like, on machines, you know, where machines right now are very challenging when it comes to high velocity.

So we're going to, we like working on those indications. It's kind of simulate the game speed, but let's take X amount of swings, so we can be good for the game. So we try to monitor that aspect of things, but it's unfortunate because it's just happening so often throughout the game that we all try to figure it out and trying to, you know, look for answers. Just logistically, when do you think you'll hear something about Lance, Joe?

You know what? He was seeing the doctor today around 1030, which is 1030. It's 1038. So he's actually seeing our team doctors right now. So maybe, you know, in a couple hours, I'll have something post-game. I do know that Altube is going to meet us in Chicago. So, you know, he's been one of those guys that have been blessed with,

like his body heals very quickly, and, you know, he takes really good care of his body and the way he eats, the way he rests. So hopefully when we see him in Chicago, he's in a better spot. Maybe we could start doing some mobility activation in the weight room and start doing some core exercises if he feels good. But with Lance, we'll hear something here in the next hour or two. Well, we'll let you go on this. Your offense in the first month of the year was putting up some huge numbers.

And again, overall, the work has been pretty good. But it feels like it's been about a two-week stretch where you were kind of dying for some offense. Really probably since that 10-run game against Cincinnati. Where are you finding things? Is this a byproduct of some guys slumping? Is this a byproduct of injured players, which I think would be a large part of that? Tell me where you're seeing this team. Because look, you're getting a win.

You got one yesterday, but you obviously want to get more than five hits in a baseball game. Yeah, you know, and getting, you know, more than two runs and, you know, be able to open some games up so we can get some work, you know, don't rely, don't have to rely on the same guys out of our bullpen. we could give some guys some opportunities and take some of our starters out of the games. All those stuff are great. But in this game, it's, you know, offense go ups and down. And another thing is the last two series at home, you know, Seattle, Texas, you know, that's probably the best starting pitcher in the game. So you have to grind through that.

And, you know, we did that with Texas. We'll take two out of three. We're facing Joe Ryan today, who's another good starter. So we have been running into some really good pitching staff, and you have to find a way to score runs. Even, you know, I mean, you know, even doing through small ball bunning guys over, like, we have to find ways to get guys across on plate. Joe, thank you for the visit. And good luck this afternoon. Safe Travels to Chicago.

And we'll talk again next week. We really appreciate it, as always. All right, fellas. Appreciate you, man. See you. You got it. Joe spotted with us here on Sports Talk, 70.