The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Joe Espada Joins The Show Talking State Of Team/ Line-up

Episode Date: June 10, 2025

Joe Espada Joins The Show Talking State Of Team/ Line-up  

in a row. Hope that you enjoyed that off day yesterday. Yes, we did. Yes, we did. You know, especially after a nice road trip, getting a chance here to relax yesterday and get us still ready for 13-game stretcher here. You know, Ross brought us up to me yesterday, and we'll ask you, if I gave, you know, back when we were growing, actually before I was growing up, I don't want to age myself too bad, Skip,

but they used to have a couple scheduled double-headers every year. year. Would you like to see that to give yourself two more off days or three more or do you want to just kind of keep as is right now? I like the way that we have it right now. Just because double headers can just cause some fatigue? It's a long

day. You know, you're asking a lot of your players, your pitching staff. You know, even right now, you know, we do everything in our power to get games in when it rains. Yeah. Just because of the toll

double-headers take on your team, on your staff, usually takes a couple of days for you to recover for 18 innings, you know, it's not like you're going to play 1-9 and 1-7 or 2-7- inning games. No, you're playing 18 innings. That's a long day. Hey, I was glad you guys got the game in on Sunday. I know the result wasn't what you wanted, but you had rain in Pittsburgh. How does a manager of a baseball team kill three hours and 20 minutes? Well, there's a lot of work that, you know, that you can do in those three hours, you know, going to Cleveland gave me an opportunity just to go and look over Scott and report and video and kind of prepare myself for the Cleveland series since we were going to get there really

early hours in the morning. So, you know, I was able to sleep in a little bit and did most of my work doing that, doing that rain delay. And it was a very good road trip. You took two out of three from Pittsburgh, two out of three from Cleveland. And I don't know. Did you spend any time? watching the end of that Arizona Seattle game last night. You know what? I did watch Nailer walk off home.

On my off day, I'm trying to spend it entire day, my entire day with the family, devote my time to the girls, try to stay away from watching any ball games. But I do go and catch some highlights

and just catch up to know what's going on that on the league. Astros, Manager Joe Spotted with us here. We talk a lot about pitching and hitting and rightfully so. But the defense has been really great for you guys lately as well. How much of is that a factor for you when you're kind of figuring things out, putting lineups together, and just kind of figuring out how things fit defensively?

Yeah, huge, something that we've done here really good for the eight years that I've been here. You know, we pitch and we play defense. I think that's kind of like cornerstone the foundation of our organization. We have been blessed with some elite hitters and some really good offenses. but I think what allows us to be successful and put ourselves in championship position has been our defense and our pitching. So when I put lineups together

or when I'm walking through my strategy, want to make sure that I keep defensive options on my bench and also when I'm playing certain pitchers are on the mound, trying to have the best defense behind. them to try to prevent as many runs as you can or trying to gain as many outs as we can. Lance McCullors, Jr., on the hill for you today against the White Sox back-to-back quality starts.

How are things been going with him day to day and your confidence level in him today? Good. Yeah, he's been, he's been in a really good spot in between starts. I think his work has been really good, giving him some extra an extra day has really help him bounce back and recover. you know, I think in doing these 13 games stretch, we are going to be tested one more time, our resiliency when it comes to our pitching. And I think we are in a really good spot here trying to be smarter at how we lined these guys up, trying to give these guys an extra day here and there.

And hopefully it puts it in a position to have a nice stretch here 13 in a row. I know that Major League Baseball dictates, you know, how big your roster is when it comes to pitchers and position players, would you like a little more flexibility with that? Because let's say that you were a manager, Joe, that even with the off days you wanted to go with a six-man rotation or you had enough guys to do so. Would you like to be able to have an extra arm

because you are making that sacrifice and going with a six starter? You know what? I think I'm open to having a conversation about having, you know, carrying an extra pitcher. I think in today's game, how, you know, we use our pitching and how this long stretch of games and also, you know, looking at the injuries on the pitching front, carrying an extra arm, I think it would help.

I think that would be open to a conversation on that extent of things and how can we really help our staff protect them and have a little bit more of an extra arm that can, we could deploy them and protect some of the guys we have, since we're asking. a lot of these guys in today's game. Let's get to the offense a little bit. It was late April. I think you made the decision to go with Jeremy in the leadoff spot, and your PR staff does a good job by giving us notes about how he has been since in that top spot.

Looking back at it, do you go, my goodness, why didn't we think about this earlier or a lot of it is that you know what? He handled the responsibility. You gave it to him, and he's made the most of it. Yeah, and I think that's the way I've looked at it. I think he has really embraced the role. He's done a really good job. I think Hosey also in the three spots, he's hitting over 300.

So I think the move has paid off. Having prorated there in the middle, getting on base, also, you know, driving the ball of the ballpark. I think it's going to, it has been a really good move. And, you know, we, you know, we find ourselves in first place playing really good baseball. And I feel like our offense still hasn't really taken any, I haven't carried that momentum that I've seen. seen in the past. And once he gets hot, I think it's going to be, you know, one that we are going to ride on for a while. But Jeremy Pena has done a fabulous job. The way he's hitting the ball, the energy that he brings the speed on the basis, the hustle, just he's been phenomenal.

You know, I was mentioning to the audience yesterday about the intangibles. And look, when you play 162, you've got to score runs, you've got to have good pitching, got a little bit of things. but the two things that teams tend to forget about that custom division championships or playoff position, Skip, are defense and bullpen. And your bullpen has been phenomenal. Your defense has been top shelf for many, many years. When you're on the plane coming home,

we're closing your eyes going to bed and I going, man, we have put together a team that hasn't been at its best offensively, but I've got two parts of my game that have been so solid that it's kept us where we are right now. Correct. You know, and that's very important for us to protect those areas of strength while we work on the areas that need to, you know, that we need to get going, like our offense. And our offense has shown, you know, strides where, you know, for example, you know, we have 19 come from behind wins. The only way you do that is you pitch, you play defense, keeps you in the game.

And then here comes the two-out runs, you know, out-to-out runs and our resilience offense that we never out of a bargain, right? So there is those qualities, there is those elements of our, of our offense that are there. It's just finding consistency every day where we can not have to lean on heavily on our bullpen just to always try to keep us in the game. And it's just a matter of time. But it's important for me to protect, you know, our defense and our bullpen and our rotation to continue to give us quality, starts for us to continue to, you know, put ourselves in a position to play deep in October.

And to wrap up our conversation, you mentioned the number of run score with two outs. I was looking at some stats. I think you're the only team in the top five in the last two months that have done as much as you've done with two outs and winning baseball. So is it coincidental? I mean, is the approach changing or is a little bit of both? I think it's both. I think we, you know, you never, you got, you have to, I always tell our teams, you have to force us to play 27. Like we're not going to stop playing until a 27 out of the game is it's done.

You know, we are going to find ways. It just takes one pitch. It takes one walk. It takes you putting the ball in play and our opponent's making a mistake. We got to keep, you know, pressure on defense, you know, by stealing a base, by going first to third. That's how you stay in games. And we have done a really good job of that. And we can't stop doing that.

We have kind of shown a way of that's going to be our style. And my job is just to make sure that, hey, we are going to be this type of team for 162. We can't stop. And they've done a really good job responding to that. Skip, thanks for the visit. As always, we'll see the ballpark later on this afternoon. And good luck tonight against the White Sox. All right, man.

Thank you.