The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Joe Espada Breaks Down Astros Recent Games & Lineup

Episode Date: June 30, 2026

Joe Espada Breaks Down Astros Recent Games & Lineup

But right now, let's get to the man who will be a part of those next couple of days. And it is the manager of your Houston Astros, Joe Espada, with Matt and Ross. Skip, good afternoon to you. Boy, your squad in the last couple of weeks during these winning ways have put together some pretty incredible offensive performances ending seven through nine, including last night, obviously coming up a little bit short. What do you attribute that to? Yes, they are. They're swinging the bat is a lot better.

actually getting good pitches to hit. Their swing decisions has been great. They've been driving the ball, big homers, but also there's some walking there that I'm really pleased with. Getting production from some of those guys in the bottom of our order has been awesome to watch. And we need to keep that going. We need our offense all the love to spread down the 1 through 9.

And again, the late innings have been part of the big, you know, run through. A other Detroit series had so many good elements to it because you were getting home runs, you were getting late game work. And I will say this. Is your outfield starting to settle in a little bit in terms of maybe not so much consistency,

but at least maybe some guys like Tremel maybe taking the lead in order to maybe say, hey, I'm worthy of some more playing time? Yeah. And that's the whole idea of, you know, getting these guys in games against certain matchups that we know that they can have some success and hopefully they could take that they could take that that step forward and their bats have been

great you know even yesterday down 5-1 Matthews for them just looked like he was dealing he threw the ball extremely well but our guys there never gave up we were you know one base runner away from from bringing the other winning run to the plate and that's exactly what we need from our offense, from our team, and the fight and that, you know, that level of intensity and urgency has been fun of watch for the last month. I'm curious about a question, not in particularly one game skip, but I'm always curious your thoughts about when you make lineup changes in the middle of the game when you move a guy from the left side, the right side of the plate, is that discussed even before the game

if a certain reliever comes in, I'm going to flip the guy and make a pinch hitting change, or is that a little bit of feel? And is it a little bit of sometimes if a guy has a three-hit day, but he only hits certain left-handers or well and other left-handers not, do you sometimes want to change your mind during that? What's a philosophy around the switching guys around latent games and pinch hitting roles? No, those are talks. We talk about those prior to the series with the players and coaches, too.

They are, you know, not necessarily righty, lefty, but also the score of the game, we are ahead, we're down. Do I want to keep my best defense on the game? You know, do if they bring a lefty in the sixth inning, and that's their only lefty, do I want to use my pinch it righty in the six when I know I might, I might run into the high leverage relief? in the eight and nine, which are right-hand or pitchers. So do I want to make the move and use my right-hand or bullet then,

or do I want to wait for it later? And there's all those elements that go into the decisions. So it's not necessarily, you know, automatic. Here comes the lefty. Here comes to right. You know, there's a lot of things that goes into it, too. You know, there's some lefties that, you know, do a good job getting righties out. or there's a change-up that not necessarily my right-handed hitter can handle.

So there's a lot of elements that go into it. And, you know, it's discussed prior to the game and it's discussed with the players so they know exactly when they need to go in and get ready for. And our hitting coaches do a really good job on anticipating some of those moves. So we have all those guys ready to go. And more decisions and mixing and matching when an everyday player goes down. Jeremy Pena with the CAF issue as he hits the IL. Can you just tell us how that came about and your conversations with him?

And I know you said last night you're hoping it's a minimum stint. Yeah, and I feel like it's going to be the minimum. I think that, you know, it's mild. I think if we would have waited three or four days potentially, we could have gotten on the field. But we can't risk this. you know, it's we have an off-day Thursday. We have another off-day the next Thursday,

so we do have a little bit of a time here to get it right and not have this linger and become any worse. We'll have them running here over the weekend, springing and see how it feels next week, maybe see if it needs an bat or two with our AAA team just to see how it feels and we could test the calf, but I think we are in a good place. You know, when it comes to his injury, I don't think it's severe.

You know, he mentioned it to us yesterday that he was just sore that the right leg in general was sore. So we went and saw the doctor and we saw that they were kind of on that cap area. So we should be able to take care of it. And he should be back here pretty soon. Astros manager Joe Espada with us here on a sports talk 790. pitching side. You're planning to get healthier. What is that like trying to figure out? I mean, it feels like every time somebody goes out there, it's a big start to try to stay in the rotation, whether it be tongue who got sit down, you got Burroughs tonight, Javier, McCullors,

Blanco, all on the cusp. What are those conversations like? And you personally try to weigh the performances versus the best fit and guys with options and all that kind of stuff. All of those things play a role. And I love competition. I think when you, when you know, that someone has come in, right, it creates a level of competition and intensity that you want your players to have, right? Like, they embrace those,

they know that some movement might be coming, I need to perform, I need to continue to pitch well, and make it tough on us. You know, you could never have enough pitching because of those decisions that we'll make here in the upcoming weeks. But we need all the pitching that we can, that we can have just to keep everyone healthy, just to continue to win games, just to continue to make a push.

We need all these guys ready to go. And, you know, once the All-Star break comes and we get going in the second half, you know, I could see us, you know, making some moves where some of those guys might have to go on the pan. We got, you know, some tough decisions are going to, we're going to have to make some really tough decisions. I think it's very tough skip because here's the thing. You're going to have a bunch of off days. So in theory you don't need a six-man rotation because you

normally knew that when you're playing 13 or 14 in a row. But you're also about to enter after the All-Star break the quote-unquote dog days of the season where guys may be hitting innings threshold and maybe that's the reason why tongue got sent down. So you're having to balance that plus you're going to be sending somebody,

I don't know who it's going to be, but somebody that's been a part of your rotation to the bullpen at some point. Plus your bullpen's been used a lot. Man, tough is an understatement, I think, Joe. Honestly, I don't know where – people are asking us what to do, and I have no idea what you're going to do. No, they're tough decisions, and you start those conversations. You start making those plans right now.

You start playing, you know, putting on paper, you know, different scenarios or what might look like. Things change daily, you know, because you just don't know, right, injuries can happen. So you always have a plan A, there's a plan B, and you start having some discussions, you know, with the staff and, and, you know, there's some of these guys that, there's, there's any thresholds to some of them. So a blow can help July and August. But they're, they're very difficult decisions that we have to make. But, you know, we think about our team and the health of our players. That's foremost, the most important thing. A thought about Mike Burroughs came back for him and really did a really nice job against Toronto and gave up the homeownerling and people like, oh, here we go again.

But is there anything we can get away from the short stint down in the bullpen or, you know, or you just come to him and pull him aside and say, hey, we think you're a starting pitcher. We brought you here a starting pitcher. Let's see what you got for us right now. No, yeah. And, you know, we got him here to be a starting pitcher. And we love his arsenal and, hey, you know, how he. goes about things and how we compete. We all love that, but I think we need it a little big.

So that was that short stint to the pen, just one inning, getting ready for Toronto. He threw the ball extremely well in Toronto. He's got another start today, you know, take this game today, so we have an opportunity to win another series tomorrow. But we, you know, we monitoring this guy's volume and the pitch quality and how they, how they're bouncing back, you know, a lot of it. all of these guys, they haven't throw these many innings, these many starts

in their career. So we are keeping a really close eye on how they, their performance, but also how they come in the next day and how they feel and how they're able to bounce back. Because like you mentioned, we're not going to need a six-man rotation until I think we've got

an all-a-long stretch of games in August. But right now, you know, we should be good with five-man rotation. We'll get you out on this. So you mentioned, Jeremy, to the I.L. Have you guys, A, made a roster spot, and B, how do you envision the next week and a half, two weeks, if it's that long? And who will be your shortstop for the foreseeable future? Yeah, so we, yeah, we did make a move. And, you know, right now, I do have Nick Allen.

We have, I'm not going to announce who we bring him up, but we do have the guys that can hold that position for the next week. I'm really, really feel strong about Jeremy spending the minimal stint on the aisle.

So, you know, for now, we'll have, you know, for me, it's always the defense first. And if our offense continuing to swing the bats really well, I feel really good about, you know, who's going to defend that position for now. But we will be, we'll be,

be in a good spot for the next the next Taindale while we were for Jeremy. And lastly, you've used Altovae as a five-old hitter, I think at times in the last few weeks since Jeremy's been back. Now you use him as a lead-off. What do you see? Is Jose your lead-off guy

for a while, or is that still kind of up for grabs? You want to maybe try a couple of different combinations? Yeah, you know, I'm going to try this for the next couple of days and hopefully you know, hitting in front of Yordan. He's got some, you know, pitches early in the zone and

Jose's able to put some good swings on them and get him going here a little bit. So I think this could be a good opportunity to get Al-Tuver hot once again. So the plan is for that to be like that for the next day or two. And then there we go from there. Very good. Skip, thanks for the time. We'll see you tomorrow night at the ballpark.

Good luck against the Twins this evening. We appreciate the visit as always. All right, fellas. Thank you. Thank you. Joe Espato with us here on Sports Talk 790.