The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Lance Mcullers On His 1st Start And The Season Ahead

Episode Date: July 28, 2020

Lance Mcullers On His 1st Start And The Season Ahead

This is 790 baseball direct. Direct from the ballpark. To your radio. Driven by Texas Direct Auto, powered by Vroom. And how about Lance McCullors? Hey, it's Lance McCullors. Back to Matt Thomas. Turnball swinging a misstack three.

On Sports Talk 790. Your home for Houston Astros baseball. That is the greatest introduction to the return of the Matt Thomas show here on Sports Talk 790. When Lance McCullors introduces himself to the program. Lance, it's Matt. How are you, friend? What's up, guys? How are you doing? Hey, I said this earlier to my audience, and I'm not kidding with you.

Can we bubble wrap you for like the next, except on days you have to pitch? Because we need to keep you healthy. Pitchers are dropping like flies on your squad, and it feels like every other team in baseball right now. Yeah, you know, injury bugs going around. You know, that is something that we thought league-wide, happen with the with a long period that we head off and then the quick kind of summer camp ramp up, so to speak. But, you know, I'm feeling really good. I'm feeling healthy. You know, I've put the work in that I've needed to to get to this point through the whole, you know, Tommy John rehab

and a little hiatus we had. And, you know, I'm looking forward to taking the ball as many times as I can. Yeah, you put the work in. You grabbed your first victory in a long period of time. You know, I know the guys were asking you about it after the game and you're on a Zoom call. so you don't really have a chance to maybe materialize it. But when you got home, you had time with a family, did you sit back and go, man, a lot of tough work to come back to where I am at this exact moment. Yeah, well, I actually just rushed out of the field.

I was trying to get home to see my daughter before she went down. But it was a long time. I didn't quite realize, I think because I did the rehab during 2018, I did pitch a little bit in the postseason. and I was around the team all last year. Many guys that are rehabbing from Tommy are down in the spring training sites of each team. But I didn't realize it was quite that long. Someone told me before the game, you know, almost two years to the day.

And it was a good over two years since my last win, my last win, a couple of star or two before the All-Star break back in 2018. So when you put it in terms like that, look at the days, like 7202 days, you kind of get lost in just to rehab and taking every day. day as an individual day, but that's a long time. So I was proud of the effort that I put in. Ross Villarreal with you, Lanson, and just how did you feel afterwards? Just on the baseball side, obviously, emotionally, it was a roller coaster for you. Just how did you feel about command of your pitches? How do you feel afterwards? And just how are you feeling now?

I felt great. You know, I've been working so hard throughout this period of time to get my change up in a position to where it's a really lethal pitch for me. It's going to be a big pitch. You know, you guys saw it. I got me out of the gym in that first inning. First pitch changed up to Nola in the zone with good, with good depth and got a double play. Many times throughout the rest of the game, I had two strikeouts on it, got a couple other swinging misses, had some opportunities. I used it to give back in the count.

So I split my pitches up about 33% each, you know, give or take. And it was a good mix for me. I definitely was a little erratic early, especially with the breaking ball. Two of the three guys that I walked, actually, I had. at 02, which is frustrating. But, you know, those are things that you learn back in the start and back in the group of things, and I'll clean up moving forward. Lance McCulloch is with us here on the Matt Thomas show.

We were opening up our conversation about the number of injuries, not only with your staff, but around baseball. Is this, unfortunately, a byproduct, Lance, of you guys having to get this summer camp done in a very short period of time? Yeah, I think so. I mean, baseball is a very methodical thing. I mean, guys understand it's almost like your body understands how much time you do have to get ready. I mean, there's times during, you know, midweeks where your body's dragging along and all of a sudden you wake up on start day and, you know, your body's found a way to kind of get itself in the right spot.

And same thing. You know, we know we typically have a longer buildup to spring training. And then you kind of ramp down almost when you get to spring and you build back up throughout spring training. Where in this instance, you know, you were trying to do what you've done. could stay in shape. And then as soon as you got to camp, it was full go. But that's what was asked of us. That's what we had to do in order to, you know, make the start of the season. And, you know, I think some of the injuries you guys are seeing are from that. And hopefully, you know, guys start getting more used to it and we can have a, you know, more healthy season.

Dodgers in for two games tonight. Just man to man on this. I hope they're just like every other normal set of two baseball games with a lot of crowd. I'm assuming you'd agree with me on that. Yeah, I mean, it is what it is. I think the fans, and especially the, you know, Dodgers fans are making this series, you know, something that's really not. It's two-game series in the first week of, you know, post-summer camp. You know, they obviously have two of their horses going in Bueller and in May. So we're looking forward to it.

They're a good team. It's always nice to play other good teams and gauge yourself where you're at. I was actually a lot more impressed with Seattle than, you know, then rumored, I guess, than what you would typically expect. I thought they play a good defense. They have pretty good lineup. They have some speed at the top, speed at the bottom. And they have some new guys, some young guys in there who can legitimately swing it.

So they had a nice little ball club coming in, and it was good to get that first, you know, big series win, especially in a four game set. And, you know, we've got to move forward and play some more good baseball. Sound effects, the noise. when you're on the hill, do you hear much of that with a regular crowd? And what was it like having it artificially put in the stadium? The artificial stuff is bad. It is what it is.

It's not even, you know, it's not loud enough. When they do turn it loud, it sounds a bit like a low buzzing crowd. When it's not loud, I think Reddick described it the best. It sounds like my daughter's white noise machine. So, you know, it is what it is. Like I said, we know this year is going to be extremely different. You guys are already seeing how different it is with just the guys that are kind of, you know, going on the DL that you typically wouldn't expect.

So it's going to be one of those years. We have to battle through. We have to stay safe. Stay healthy. I think the teams that position themselves as far as COVID-IEL goes are going to be the teams that are putting themselves in a good spot to win it all. Yeah. And speaking of that, Lance, obviously.

you know what's going on in Miami and all the positive tests and now their season is on pause. Just, I mean, your general thoughts on that. Have you guys obviously talking about it in a group text or something like that? What is just the feeling with what's going on over there? Yeah, well, this was one of my big concerns. I'm the rep for the Astros, and one of my big concerns throughout negotiations was we were cramming the timeline so far up against, you know, against the wall that we weren't going to have any time for makeup games. And the amount of time that we did have for any type of makeup games, you know, somehow, some way, we couldn't find any more days to play actual season games, but we found a way to, you know,

shove a couple of other playoff games in there. So those days are now gone. It's going to be a situation where double headers are going to have to come into effect. And as you guys are already seeing, you know, guys are having a hard time, just, you know, bouncing back. And we have long stretches this year. We have, I think, one or two stretches at least where we have. 17, you know, games in a row. We have a stretch this season where we play 17, get one off day, play 10 or 11 more, and then get another off day. So it's going to be interesting to see how

they handle that. Hopefully, this is a good lesson and reminder to everybody the situation that we're facing, and we can avoid this in the future. Last question for a let you run. You guys went to Kansas City, kind of went through a walkthrough of what it was like to get on a plane, go to a hotel during all this. What was that like? Was it dramatically different than a normal road trip would have been? No, it was pretty similar.

We flew in the day of, though. So we flew in the day of to avoid the action I at the hotel, so that was a little different. But other than that, the clubbies, you know, at our field, the away and the homes, I was on the wayside during summer camp. And now, you know, going to KC. They're all doing a great job of keeping the facilities clean and making sure everyone's masked up.

And, you know, our players have done a great job. I'm not around other teams, obviously, but the players in our locker room and the players at our alternate site all understand, you know, what we're facing and they understand that guys need to take this seriously. So, you know, I feel good at least about where the Houston Astros are and our ability to, you know, follow protocols. So we're just going to keep doing that throughout the season. And, you know, it is what it is. There's no fans. It's going to be weird traveling. We can't leave the hotel on the road.

We're kind of confined to our room. but we're trying to get a season in and we're trying to do it the best and safe this way we can. I know a lot of people out there on social are easy to criticize, but we're doing our best. Well, whatever it has is a player. If you've got to get some more per diem money, those room service charges have to be

piling up a little bit. No, you're not lying, right? We'll have to try to figure that out. We have a lot of young guys on the squad, so maybe some of the older guys will have to pitch in for them. All right, we've got you on tape saying that now. Lance, thank you for the time, my friend. Congratulations to getting a victory for the long time and stay safe. Have a great road trip and we'll talk with you soon. All right, guys. Thanks. You got it. Lance McCullors, Jr. joining us here on the Matt Thomas

Show.