The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Reid Ryan Discusses The Updated ALCS Schedule and Yankees Fans Behavior

Episode Date: October 16, 2019

Astros President of Business Operations, Reid Ryan, joins Matt and Ross to discuss the logistics of the new ALCS schedule after the postponement of Game 4, rowdy Yankees fans, and the start time to purchase World Series Tickets

to run home run. Welcome to the Business of Baseball podcast, brought to you by Expedity, the future of awesome. Here's Sports Talk 790s, Matt Thomas, and Houston Astros president, Reed Ryan. Come the president of your Houston Astros. Hail to the chief of Crush City. How about the Houston Astros? Astros president, Reed Ryan on 790 is brought to you by Expedity.

The Future of Awesome. Time is 1235. Let's go to the streets of New York City. We were going to have A.J. Hinch join us here. But sometimes Major League Baseball, like I said, we're going to take the manager over his weekly radio hit. Okay, fine, whatever I'll be. So we've brought in the ace of the business operations.

He's out of the bully, isn't he? He's out of the bullpen. Reid, tell us where you are at this exact moment right now. I'm on Madison Avenue looking down the street at the, I think that's the Chrysler building right now, but just been helping some lunch and I've been on my cell phone a lot today. How's the weather right now as we speak? Yeah, it's starting to sprinkle a little bit, very overcast, and, you know, MLB made the right call because it looks like it's really getting sucked in here for the rest of the night.

Well, first of all, congratulations on the victory. Second of all, did you and Jeff go get some exercise this morning, according to his Twitter account? We did. So I didn't want to be an over-poster, but yesterday on the bus, or whatever day we found in there, saw the day before, Jeff Luno and I both own Pelotons, and so does Derr and Goa, our traveling secretary. And so we're always sitting along the road. And most of time, the hotel will have one or two, so we've shown up at the same spot before. And so Jeff goes, hey, you want to go do Pelotons today? And we thought we might rain out today. And I was like, yeah, in Jersey, so we had a special deal set up, and we just wanted the alley with a class. Oh, Chris. Hello, son, and they gave us some swag, and we crunched for a while. It was good way to start morning. It was a certainly great way to celebrate last night's victory.

Let's get to more logistics of this. The thought of the game is going to be played at 7 Eastern on Friday, 6-hour time. Was there any thought of it being played earlier so everybody could back, or is this television and sometimes dictate that more than anything else? Yeah, so that's from the topic of discussion. Had the national series still been going on, we would have played earlier in the day, and we would have been the first game,

it's about a national audience. It's about, you know, Fox maximizing their, you know, the TV revenue, and so that broke us at, you know, 6 o'clock Central, 7 o'clock Eastern. So it'll be a long night. We'll get in real early Saturday morning, and then obviously if games, even Saturday and, Sunday. We will have those. The times are out. So it will be 7 o'clock, 707 Saturday, and 637 Sunday, if needed.

So, you know, perfect world. We take care of business the next two days and don't have to worry about it. Reid Ryan, President of Business Operations with us here on the Matt Thomas show from New York City. I read a lot of reports about verbal and things being verbal abuse and things being thrown on the field at Yankee Stadium. You know, obviously being a road team as difficult as it is in the postseason, but anything that can be done is it gave New York a very bad look yesterday. Yeah, you know, this is something that falls under my purview, and so we've had some calls today. You know, you can ask you about it tomorrow. He'll go into a little more detail about what was said on the field. Matt, this is the fifth time I've been here for a playoff here.

There's a couple of the Rangers when my dad was over there as president. And then obviously 15, the wildcard game, 17, the ALCS, and back here for the ALCS. And it's one of the best baseball venues in the game because the fans are so passionate. But with that passion often comes a lot of, you know, things that we wouldn't see in Houston of people throwing stuff. and hurly insults and all that kind of stuff. And so the people in the bullpen and security guards, and they're do a really good job. But it's the folks up in the stands and the people on the aisles,

whether they're ushers or security, that pretty much just let it go. And, you know, we have beer thrown on us. We've had bottles thrown at us. I read it at all kinds of stuff thrown at him last night. And it's just part of coming to New York, and hopefully the league now is realizing that, we need to do a better job of making sure player safety is at the fourth of this game.

Those two guys are above the first row in the right field deck when Reddick makes a play at the wall. I was really scared we were potentially headed for some sort of fan interference or something, and thankfully it didn't happen. But I don't want, you don't want anybody that's watching whether you're a fan of either one of the two teams or not. We don't want anything fan interference-wise to determine a very important game. So I just hope that that's as close as it got yesterday. Yeah, I do as well, and hopefully, you know, what was said by Josh resonated with the league. I know I got an email this morning from him.

We've been looking at it today and trying to find exactly what we can do about it. So because we're going the right direction here, we just need to take care of business. You know, Grinky will be throwing Thursday and Verlanders will be throwing Friday, and so it gives us a couple of great shots. You've got two former Sy Young Award winners going for our side. And look, Grinky pitch really good his first time. You know, only three runs and six days. I'll take that again.

Bat seem to be, you know, coming alive. And so I like our position much better today than after game one in Houston. All right, we'll let you go. Brave the elements the best you can. You know what? Napping in New York with the 2-1 series lead with the rain is not a bad idea. So maybe you can decompress a little bit because... Well, I don't know about that.

I'm going to try to keep myself busy today. But what I will say, Matt, is tomorrow at 9 a.m., World Series tickets go on sale. So for those of you that are season ticket holders, with the Astros, you will get a link to be able to buy tomorrow. And then in the afternoon, the standing room only will go on sale. So if you're curious about Astros tickets, it's Astros.com backslash postseason. and go ahead and get on there.

That will give you all the information and go ahead and get registered. And you know what? We've got to start planning for it. There's a good shot. We're going to be there. I hope that is the case. Last question for I let you run. Where will you guys be in terms of having discussions about the roof being open or closed,

especially if the weather is conducive for it next week? Well, you know, this is a complete situation. I spent last week with MLB, and MLB has control the postseason games. They make the call today on to postpone. But my point to them, and under the rest of the rest of the rest of the rest of, and I'm, and under the Rob Manfredera, he's been really accommodating to us closing the roof. And the point I've had with MLB has been, look, you know, why do we want to have sun in someone's eyes or, you know, Twilight, or now we have wind that affects a pop-up

or effects a ball blowing in or out for either team? These are two best teams in American League. Let's just close the roof. Let's have the same conditions for everybody and know that we don't have to worry about any of that. And so hopefully that's what we'll continue because these teams are so elite. And we're looking at some of the, you know, how many Hall of Famers are on both these teams? It's amazing the guys that are on this field. I don't want to have flutes deciding a championship series for these teams.

All right, we'll leave it at that. Thank you, Reed. Safe Travels back. And let's not even worry about six and seven. Thank you for the time, my friend. All right, man, see you. You got it. Reed Ryan, President of Business Operations for the Astros with us from New York City.

Kiss it goodbye. Thanks for listening to the Business of Baseball podcast with Sports Talk 790s, Matt Thomas, and Houston Astros president's Reid Ryan. See you later! Business of baseball is proudly brought to you by Xfinity, the future of awesome.