The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Rockets Ride 6-Game Win Streak; Astros Drop Opener vs A’s. Hunter Brown Lands on IL

Episode Date: April 6, 2026

Rockets Ride 6-Game Win Streak; Astros Drop Opener vs A’s. Hunter Brown Lands on IL

is the Matt Thomas show with Ross. Thomas, he is out traveling with the Rockets at his number one most important gig. Today he is out, and today is a Monday edition of the Matt Thomas show with Ross with you until 2 o'clock. Here on Sports Talk 790. Al-Ley and Javari's going to end bow to basketball. To Shangoon, top of the art. Hands it to Katie. Katie gives it back to Alpi.

Left-hand lamp around the ribbon in for two. and the Rockets regain the lead at 117-116. Weekend. See what we did there, Danil? Danimal. That was really good. Hot and Cold Weekend from your Houston sports teams. Would that be alliteration?

Is that what that is? Like the play on words right there with the music and then... No, alliteration is just the first letter. Oh. Like fantabulous fornicators. Hmm. I don't know why. Don't ask me why that's the first thing that came to my mind.

Oh, yeah, let's move on. There's no judgment. Hey, let your freak cloud flying. I'm feeling a little judged. All right, anyways. Hey, welcome in. Welcome in to a Monday edition of the Matt Thomas show with Ross. Matt Thomas is out.

He is traveling. As I said, his number one gig, of course, is with the Houston Rockets. So he will be missing the game today. I'm missing the show today. Also missing the show on Wednesday because it's some late night West Coasters going. going on right now. The Rockets tipped off at 9 o'clock last night in Golden State. And coming up tomorrow, they tip off at 10 o'clock in Phoenix. So that game will be over with at like 11 o'clock Phoenix time, probably fly out of there at like 1 a.m. their time. So that's like getting back here,

like pretty much in the middle of our show. He can almost host the show from the plane. That's basically what's going on with Matt. Fire up the Comrecks, Matt. Yeah, all right. So he's going to be missing some time. He goes walking by EMA. Want to sit down for a second? With his number one gig being the play-by-play radio voice of the Houston Rockets here on Sports Talk 790. Of course, I'm joking. All right, so where do we start? Well, let's just lay it out a little bit.

Rockets got a late night last second win over the Golden State Warriors 117 to 116. Thank goodness because, I mean, Steph Curry. I've had enough, Steph Curry. Can he retire? It's enough. He's been torturing Houston for way too long. He came back his first game. He'd been missing time with his injury, and he was incredible.

He looked like he had played the last couple of months, not set out the last couple of months. Yeah, it was quite annoying, but Kevin Durant had 31 points. Rockets able to get the last second win. We can certainly talk about that. And then your Astros over the weekend, it was, I mean, the baseball was baseballing in Sacramento. I mean, you had an 11 to 4 Astros loss on Friday. Then they bounce back with an 11 to 0 win. Then they're down 9 to 5 on Sunday, come all the way back,

and then lose 12 to 10 in extra innings in Sacramento. The lesson here, folks, play the over in Sacramento. The ball just freaking flies out of there. Yeah, and I mean, I guess that you can look at the good and bad from it. The bad is that you give up 21 combined runs. and the two losses that you have. Actually, no, you gave up 23 of them because you gave up 12 of them yesterday. You were up 10 to 9.

But then you get the Brett Rooker three-run homer there to be able to lose it. But the good is that the one game that you lost in the full nine innings is you scored four runs. I mean, there was a time where four runs was like the high water market for this offense. slamming strows today. They explode for four runs. They were able to get you four runs. But yeah, but you got to correct. Four runs in Sacramento is like two runs anywhere else. That's pretty much it. I mean, it's like dog years of offense and baseball. So, but I mean, you score 10 yesterday. You score 11 in the game before that.

I mean, it's like, okay, what's the problem with this team? It ain't your hitters. Just like we all predicted. The offense is amazing and the pitching has an issue. I mean, that's just it. And that's why, you know, me and Cole did this, you know, you guys hopped on. And we talked about, is it more of a belief in the bats or is it a concern in the pitching? I'm with a concern with the pitching right now. I'm concerned, but I'm not super concerned. By the way, let me just set the table a little bit.

We will have Brian Bogusevich joining coming up at 11 o'clock. He will join us 11 to 1. Dan Matthews is hanging out with Matt out as well. And you guys can get in 713-212-5-790 is the 4. phone number 713212-5-790. Phone lines wide open with anything you guys want to get to. Yeah, I think, now, it's probably a case-by-case basis. Let me put it this way.

And oh, by the way, we didn't even mention Hunter Brown on the I-L with a shoulder strain. That was fun news to wake up to, or I guess it was a little bit after the morning yesterday. It's like, come on, man. Is it Easter fools the thing? I don't know. I was hoping it was. is announcing that Hunter Brown going down with a shoulder sprain. Dana Brown says that Hunter didn't even want to go on the IL, so we shouldn't worry.

But that doesn't mean I'm not worried because over the last couple years, Dana Brown, we've heard a lot of optimism from him. I'm just going to put it that way. Right. I mean, it's usually, and you're not wrong, is whenever things are kind of tamped down a little bit in terms of the severity of an injury. Yeah, he's going to be all right. Exactly. Then it's three months.

later is when we see that player back. Yeah, any amputation. I just look. I mean, I understand that you made some medical changes this off-season. Yeah. And maybe things are going to be different that way, but that's on you to show me that. Because until then, I'm going to believe that you're still up to

the same injury reporting tactics that you did for many years, where it was exactly that. Where did you even notice that last year, like with Yordon, how Joe Espada would do that. He's feeling much better today. He's feeling much better. Then he stopped doing that. Because I think somebody finally got to him and said, hey, look, there's really nothing new to

report on it. So when you say things like that, you're creating an expectation that he's going to be back sooner rather than later. Yeah, it's, you kind of have to sometimes disconnect. And as I said, it's just optimism from Dana Brown. So hopefully it's okay with Hunter Brown, but you take any of that with a grain of salt. We'll see how much time he misses. But it is unfortunate that there was a shoulder strain situation. And as I said, the pitching case-by-case basis, obviously Hunter Brown going down, that's not ideal. The good news is, in Sacramento against an athletics lineup that can hit, you've got a great start, or pretty good start, I should say, from Tatsuya I'mai. He threw five and two-thirds of scoreless ball, did walk some guys, but was getting a bunch of strikeouts.

that what are the the folks calling it the backwards slider from Tatsu Yemi was just I mean completely confounding the athletics lineup that was great when he had nine strikeouts so that was good to see him bounce back McCullers it's about what you'd expect that of Lance McCullors unfortunately

I imagine we're going to see Spint to Erigetti up here very soon didn't see him called up with the corresponding move with Hunter Brown It was Christian Roa that was called up. But also, in case you needed the arm, I believe Erigeti threw on Friday for the space cowboys. So I don't know, maybe in a day or two, we'll see what happens. And if they're going to go to the plan was to go to the six-man with Hunter Brown included on Friday the 10th.

So perhaps they stay with the five-man with Erigeti slotting in. I'm not exactly sure what's going to happen with this starting rotation and the Astros. But Hunter Brown down. pitching a little worrisome. But this lineup, Dan, it's looking pretty potent. No, the lineup's looking great. It's just the problem is, as I mentioned about the belief and the concern, I'm not going to believe that you're going to score eight, nine, ten runs a game.

That's not going to continue to happen. You're going to run through a stretch where... It'd be cool if they did. I mean, it really would be. Be a lot cooler if you did. Thank you, Wooderson. You made me do this. You know what you're signing up for, whatever.

I agree to come in here. They just spill out of me because I'm with, because I'm hosting with you. It's by proxy. It's your fault. If there's a way to be able to emanate osmosis from someone, you do it from me for that. So look, you're welcome.

But, I mean, that's the thing is. As good as Jordon Alvarez is, he's not going to hit 400 all season long. As good as Jose Altuve is, he's not going to hit 344 all season long. Now you like what you're seeing out of him getting on base via the walk. That's nice to see. because that's something that you, at least for the last couple of years,

had not been seeing out of him. Yeah, so up and down lineup looking a lot better, getting a lot of power, you're even getting some, like Giannieree is waking up a little bit on Saturday with three hits as well. So we got a lot to get to with the Astros. It's flipped on its head a little bit. We're more concerned about the pitching than we are the hitting.

How are you feeling? And we haven't even gotten to our good friend Brian Abrae at the back end of the bullpen. We'll get to him in a second. second. Astros angles to get to here on the show. We'll have Brian Bogus Hevick joining at 11 o'clock. Rockets with a late night victory over the Golden State Warriors

last night as well as we're inching closer and closer to the playoffs. And they are firmly planted in that five seed right now. One game behind the Lakers and the Nuggets. You want to talk about anything else that went on in the sports weekend. You can do so.

713-21-2-5-7-90 is the phone number. 713-2125790 with you until 2 o'clock it is the matt thomas show with ross with dan matthews without matt thomas with you as i said until two o'clock 1019 in the a m here on sports crazy girl they got the name of the song uh isn't it uh there's a lot of um unsavory things said in this song correct yeah quite a few It was the late 90s, like early 2000s. It was a different time.

Alt Rock slash a little bit of metal in there, a little bit. Yeah. All right. Welcome back to the Matt Thomas show with Ross without Matt Thomas. He is out today. My name is Ross Villarreal. I'm hanging out with you for four hours. Dan Matthew's hanging out for a little bit.

We've got Brian Bogussevick coming up at 11 o'clock. I know he's got to be fired up about this Astros line up and the way that they've been hitting. And it is, as I said, Sacramento, you got to throw in the caveat because it's just like, I mean, it's like a game of MLB the show up there on rookie mode or something like that every time you go up there.

So I wonder how much we take that with a grain of salt with some of the pitching performances that weren't so hot with Christian Javier and Lance McCulloch, Jr. But Tatsuya, I didn't seem to have much of an issue, at least until he got pulled in sixth. Yeah, I Amai was good. I mean, you know, the rest of your guys were so-so.

I mean, I guess, what was it? Ryan Weiss was on Friday, and Weiss was good. So, I mean, he's somebody that maybe you want to see you get a little bit more run. I like Ryan Weiss. He's looked good. I'm just saying. I wonder if they do go to a six-man rotation. If you can possibly get Blue Ball involved in there, Ryan Weiss.

I mean. See, I like Blue Ball as a high-leverage guy. I understand. I understand because he's shown very well there. But obviously, the way to get maximum value out of a pitcher, if you think that he can get out. and get enough for you is to make him a starter. So I don't know exactly how they view him at this moment.

He's been great out of the bullpen in a small sample size. Do they think that he could potentially stretch out and be effective there? The good news is, even though we haven't liked what we've seen from the pitching, I do feel like you have a backup plan and a backup plan to that and a backup plan of that. See, I think they've got a lot more options, though, they can go with with Blue Ball, where if you're going to do the starter thing with them, then you're going to do it coming out of spring training next year. he's a reliever as far as I'm concerned.

He's going to be a middle of the relief core, maybe even a high leverage guy for you when it's all said and done. And they're setting them up to be a high leverage guy. Yeah. All right. 713, 2125790 is the phone number. 713-212-5-790. What is our worry level?

With Josh Hader out, I was like, you know, all spring training. And it'll be fine. Brian Bray is going to come in there. He's going to slot right in. I even did a gut feeling. He's not going to blow a save, which, by the way, he has not blown a save. However, he has given up a lot of runs. ERA sitting at a pretty 23.63 from Brian Abrae. It has been the long ball doing a lot of damage. What's our worry level with him? The velocity was down for a little bit there. It did tick back up, but since then he's been given up some runs.

It's been the lack of command It has been the biggest one And I mean the VILA was one concern But the slider is what he works off of so well And it has been a pitch that when he's able to locate it Or at least effectively throw it for balls Where he gets swings and misses and chases With those then that's what works for him

But the fact that that's lacked effectiveness Has thrown everything completely out of whack for him Yeah shape of it has looked pretty good And he's been getting hit on his fastball as well Yesterday he threw, I'm just trying to pull it up, four fastballs. 96, 96, 95, 96. Now, that's good for most people. That's good for starters.

But we're used to Brian Abraeu humming it up there, 97, 98, 99 with the occasional touch of 100. Maybe this is just in front of me right now. But have you ever seen a player as soon as they give up a walkoff, start to walk to the outfield immediately? Because that's what Brian Abrae, you did yesterday. No, I didn't see that. Yeah, it was because, I mean, where the clubhouses are there, at Sutter Health Park that, I mean, it is

like, it is a Meyer League park. So, like, you don't have the clubhouses right behind. So as soon as that happened, it was like, do I have anything to dug out? Nope, all right. Yep. See you. I mean, it's pretty much part and parcel for how this season has begun from. Yeah. It's, I mean, they're six and four.

They're going to be fine. There are some kinks to iron out. They're still hitting. But overall, I mean, in first place, shout out, to the Reds for sweeping the Rangers over the weekend. Shout out Joe Adele for making sure that the Mariners don't hit one of three home runs. Oh, I know. That was insane. You robbed three home runs in a single game, and it was a one-nothing of finish, right?

Yeah, it was. And I brought this up earlier. It was pretty funny that the Mariners social media team caught on this with one of their home runs. And the caption for it was, not again, not again, not again, not again. And then they were like, oh, thank God. Yeah. That was crazy over the weekend. So you're in a good spot. You're still in first place in the West, and things can get better.

I mean, overall, I'm feeling pretty good. I think E. Mike and Rounden Form, Burroughs. McCullors is kind of an interesting one because he had that great start, and he was actually got at a, you know, that first inning, I was like, oh, boy, here we go. Got him to a little trouble. Concerned, but mildly, I would say. Because, I mean, as you even said, it's 10 games. We've seen slow starts out of Brian uprey you.

And that's the one that drives the bus on the concern. Because McCullors, it's, you get the seven-inning performance, and people think, oh, he's back to being that guy again. And then you saw yesterday and you're like, oh, yeah, he's not quite there yet. You can have a bad start. That happens. But it's, I mean, one of the biggest concerns that I have is with Christian Javier. I mean, he doesn't look like he can get anybody out right now. Now, not with any regularity.

Yeah, that certainly is a big one. And I just don't know, I mean, what exactly, you got to throw him out there, and he's got to figure it out. I know there are people that are like, get him off the team and put him in the bullpen. He signed a big extension a few years ago. He's making good money. Christian Javier is in your rotation. He's making $21 million this year and $21 million next year. So Christian Javier is going to be out there, and he's going to be out there.

going to get the opportunity to work out the kinks, and you hope that he can be close to the L. Rep. Teal of a couple of years ago, where the guy was the catalyst for a couple of combined no hitters, and he just looked unhittable. Well, I mean, and it's also, I mean, who you trust. You trust Josh Miller and this pitching coaching staff to be able to get things done. I mean, a couple of years ago, Hunter Brown, that start that he had against the Kansas City Royals, and you're like, this might just, this just might not work out for this guy. Like, he might. be somebody that's going to be a, you know, what could have been. And then all of a sudden, not only a conversation with Josh Miller and the pitching coaches, it was Alex Bregman telling him, you know, when you're really good is when you're running that two-seem fastball and that sinker and on right-handed hitters, you do that a little bit more to pair with your fastball. You're going to start getting guys out. And sure enough, what did he do? So those adjustments can be made.

And, I mean, we've seen it in the past with this pitching staff that they've been able to have bad performances and then come back out to next time. And you're like, yeah, hey, that's the guy that we like to see. I think mostly it's what we've been talking about. And it happens all over the place of the pitchers early in a season. It's the control, especially. If he can just get a little bit more under control, we say the same thing for, I mean, Lance McCuller's Jr. walk three guys yesterday as well. Get a little less traffic on the base pass.

This is my brilliant baseball analysis, Stan. Fewer base runners, more successful pitching. What do you think? Yeah, like giving up nine walks yesterday. Yesterday. It's not a surprise that you lose a game that you give up nine walks and you have a couple of errors. Ideal. Not ideal. Although, yeah, that A's lineup can be a little bit tough. But I think control certainly an issue early on for this Astros pitching staff just as a whole. Even from that first series against the Angels. It was it they drew 28 walks, but I think they issued like 23 or whatever it was. The Astros are the best in baseball right now for runs scored as an offense and their second worst in baseball in terms of

runs given up by their pitching staff. You know what that means? Entertainment. I mean, yesterday's game, even though they lost at the bottom of the 10th, that was a crazy-ass fun game. So this is like the late 90s, early 2000s, Texas Tech football where their games would be like 65 to 55. Well, we can go with that. I'll go with these seven seconds or less, Phoenix Suns. Okay.

How about that? Yeah. There's a little back and forth. Yeah. How about the Dallas Cowboys? the last couple years, like Dak Prescott with no defense? Fun and gun. It's been fun. Yeah, they've been funning and gunning.

So if they want to go and lose their win every game, 10 to 9, that'd be fun, although yesterday's game was like four and a half hours. You're going to have to Domingo Ryan's at an Astros game being like, what the hell is this? This is terrible. Yeah, I'm not used to it. He made you, Doka sitting in the front row. Hey, you guys play

any sort of defense around here? Yeah, Domeco Rines likes the 2-1 white-knuckle win. Like, where, he loves those pitching duels. You barely pull it out at the end. That's what DeMico Ryan lives for. Let's do it a little bit different. 12 to 10, Astros lose yesterday to the A's.

How are you feeling about the pitching? Who are you most worried about? Who do you think is not pitching well that you're at least worried about? 713-212-5-790 is the phone number. 7-13-212-5-790. And will Yorda-Alvarez challenge Ted Williams and hit 400 this year? Okay, maybe I'm sensationalizing a little bit, but that's a fact. He's hitting 400.

That guy's pretty good. We can talk about him too. 713-212-5-7-90, the Matt Thomas show with Ross. 23 in the a.m. Here on Sports Talk 790. Things are going well for you. Things, I'm telling you, life is beautiful. I'm as happy as I've ever been, and that's a fact.

Life is good. Phone lines open at 7-13-212-5-7-90. Oh, man. You're frozen again, Jonathan. What is it? Oh, there it goes. There's a close. Hey.

The computer back here would be freezing. The good news is at least, you know, because the audience would have no idea. I'm literally going to buy some RAM out of my own pocket for these computers up here. This is just absurd. Anyway, sorry, I digress. I'm just, you know, because for me, I'm one of those that, like, in the moment, I'm liable to make a really goofy looking face for a still shot. Uh-huh.

Where Jonathan didn't have that going for him. He looked hyper-focused. He did. He did. Yeah, you look like that was a good freeze shot for him. That was like when you're trying to pretend you're paying attention in the Zoom meeting. That's it. He did it perfect.

No, that's 100% what it is. It's like if you had a Zoom meeting like during March Madness time, and the freeze right there would have looked good where it's, you know, somebody's got a graph or something up there and you're actually paying attention. Yeah, I talk with my hand, so I don't know if you could get a frozen where I'm like in the middle of doing some Richard Nixon. I am not a crook. You're trying to praise him. Is the Lord over there?

Yeah, sure, why not? Seems like a good dude. Seems like a chill guy. I heard he came back yesterday. I heard that rumor. Yeah. All right, 713-212-5-790 is the phone number you want to get in. 7-13-212-5-7-90.

You thought the ball was flying out in Sacramento. Have I got something for you, folks? Rocket E's hosting the Astros. It's that time of year because the Rockets and the Astros are going. So I'm going to be calling each of them. And it even gets worse when they're playing the Colorado Rockies. Three games set in Colorado for your Houston Astros as, we'll see what happens there. But as far as the lineup, man, it's been great.

And I'm curious, actually, I might even, I'm going to write this down and maybe ask Joe a spotter tomorrow. Do you think, what do you think about this ABS system perhaps helping Jose Altuve be a little bit more judicious? Because it always felt like in years past, the strike zone was a little bit exaggerated for him because he's short and umpires will extend it felt like, especially the top of the zone for Jose Altuve. And now with this ABS and these guys know they're getting corrected, I wonder if that's helping Jose Altuva be a little bit more patient, knowing that he's going to get a more fair shake from his strike zone. It's not just a Jose Altuve thing.

I didn't realize this until I just saw talking baseball through Opta stats had this. 269 walks in Major League Baseball on Saturday and Sunday, the most in a two-day period in the modern era. Okay. So it wasn't just an Astros thing, wasn't just an A's thing. It was all of baseball was walking, and they were walking a lot. So the pitchers were correct to be wary of the ABS system because they get the benefit. I've told people this for years, and for some reason people don't want to listen to me.

You can literally easily Google it. pitchers benefit more from bad calls and hitters on average. That doesn't mean that badders don't benefit, but more than often than not, it's the strike zone getting widened. It was probably about two or three yesterday, too, that, I mean, it's either watching it on TV or hearing Robert and Steve talk about it,

where, I mean, it was at least a couple of times I heard them where they said, yeah, if they had a challenge, that would have been a strike. Yep, if they did, that probably would have been in the zone. Like, I mean, you know, after those challenges go away, which neither team had them until you got to extra inning. But, I mean, it's also, I mean, where you've heard Joe Espada talk about it, where it's highly encouraged that the catchers are going to be the ones doing it, which early on, no surprise. Christian Vasquez seems to have a better grasp on it than Yiner Diaz does.

But, I mean, I think, what was it? Rotary Munoz challenged once. And then after that, I think it was again, hey, guys, if we're going to do this, we want the catchers doing it, not you. Yeah, I'm just looking at walk rates throughout the, you. years. Right now it is 3.76 on average, basically per team, per game. Last year was 3.16. This is a huge jump, and I don't see, as of right now, okay, this is, we're very early into the season. But as I scroll down, like all the way down, okay, 3.75 in 2000, 3.68 in 1999. So basically, we're talking, we're seeing more walks than we have since the year 2000. Right now.

in baseball. That's interesting. And it's also, I mean, you know, when Hunter Brown getting hurt yesterday. And a much lower batting average. So guys aren't swinging as much, maybe. So, I mean, it's a little bit more of, I'll take the walk and get on base. I mean, just get on base, no matter what, is pretty much

what's boiling down to. Interesting. Yes. Very interesting. Yeah, I mean, because you would have thought that this was advantage hitters. I mean, because you're going to get another opportunity to be able to like, I mean, for Jose Al-Tube the old night, when he was successful, where instead of a 1-2 county

goes to a 2-1, then he gets on base. It's possible because we're only two weeks into the season, but walks are way up, strikeouts are up, and hits and home runs are down. Interesting.

Something that we'll keep an eye on. But overall, it's been great to watch the resurgence of Jose Altovae. Hitt in 344, getting on base, a couple of home runs as well. and making plays like he did yesterday at second base. I mean, the only reason that you had an opportunity at extra innings was because of him.

He makes that dive up the middle and then sees the guys trying to steal one at home. And he's just like, all right, well, that's not going to happen. Here comes to throw the plate and you're out. We're going extras. Yeah, I didn't want to tweet this to Matt because we don't argue necessarily about Jose Altuvae's second base prowess. It's just not as good as it once was. He's not as range as he once was. But Jose Al-Tube made the play

And Matt's like, look at this play, Ross. And's like, yeah, but maybe somebody with more range makes it a little bit more easily. But still, Jose Al-Tuva made a great play. And he's got great instincts out there. And, I mean, accurate throw over the baseball. I mean, dude won a gold glove out there. He's good. You think it was one of those that, you know, when right before Jose was born, it was, hey, Jose, you know, just,

let me go ahead and let you know how life's going to go. You're going to be five foot three. All right. But you're going to be a hell of a major league player. You're going to be one of the best hitters ever in the game. and you're going to be a good fielder. The only problem is you're not going to be very good at running the bases. You know, you can't be that.

He's been fine this year. You know what? Even Achilles had a heel that he was vulnerable I heard of, at least that I read in the legends. So it happens. But it's funny how that has been part of his career and baked in. And it's something that's never improved. Like, eh, whatever. He's going to have some issues.

There would be some base running blunders that you're just like, Good Lord, man. How does that happen? I would say at least I'll give him this. Generally, if you look over the years and you go one by one, generally it's him being aggressive. Yeah. Like he's trying to steal a base. He shouldn't. He's trying to go on a pass ball that he probably shouldn't have.

He's trying to turn a single into a double or a double into a triple. And when he's out, we're like, what the hell are you doing? But when it works, we're like, oh my God, Jose Out too, what a gamer. Look at it. He's got his head in the game. I think it was one time that I'd ever seen somebody thrown out at the plate on a sacrifice fly opportunity in an extra ending game against the nationals where I want to say that the catcher like almost hugged him

because he didn't slide. Like he just caught it right there and just like as he was running by I wanted to make sure he didn't fall down like held him up. That's our Jose Altuve. Oh my God, I just saw this from, I don't know, this is on my four U-tap, some random thing. leaders in major league baseball in certain hitting statistics slugging

Yordon WRC WRC plus Yordon War or Yordon OPS Yordon XBA Yord on XBA Yordon X slugging Yordon that dude is hitting He is I love it he's been playing Obviously look the other shoe will drop

If something happens in terms of him getting injured But you're hoping he's back to where he was two years ago where he played 140 plus games. And I said it, I know, it wasn't some brilliant thing that I said, but I said it in spring training. If Yordaun Alvarez has multiple big injuries and misses a lot of time,

the Astros literally are not making the playoffs. They're not. They just don't have that much wiggle room because of the way that this roster is, especially the way we've seen that's pitching so far. Like, he needs to be at the end of the day, especially when it comes to hitters, he needs to be the Astros MVP this season,

and so far he is doing that. Well, I mean, we had Dana Brown on with us as we do every single Wednesday on the morning drive with Dan and Cole, Sports Talk 790. Wednesdays, Wednesdays 930. Dana Brown, you want to hear him on the morning drive. But Dana, you know, saying that one of the home runs that Yoran hit the other night turned around those guys in the booth there at Dykin Park and said, I don't know how we survived without this guy last year. I mean, you see exactly what he means to not only, you know, just the lineup as a whole, but I mean, even the guys that bad after him. You know, Issock Paredes talking last week saying, oh, I've never had the responsibility of protecting a guy like this guy anywhere. Anywhere I've been in my career. Insane with what Yoron Alvarez has been doing. We'll talk about it with Dan coming up. We also have Brian Bogussevich joining us at 11 o'clock with us for a couple of hours. He'll be hanging out with Matt Thomas out.

Quick break here on the Matt Thomas show with Rawson Sports Talk 790. Brian Bogusevick is waiting in the bullpen. He's warming up. I don't know what kind of heat he's got left in the arm. We're going to find out coming up at 11 o'clock. He'll be with us for a couple of hours. Matt Thomas is out. We're on the Matt Thomas show with Ross, and it should be some fun stuff with Bogey coming up in a few minutes. Dan Matthews said he could give us one more.

We appreciate it. We had a mountain visit. We're going to give him another shot for one more segment. I appreciate that. That was pretty much, you know, the old footage of Mike Messina when Tori was coming out there. And he points to him and says, get back in the dugout. I'm good.

Okay, good. I've got your out right here. I'm glad. Or you didn't pull a Verlander and just spit at me. I was going to say, I'm not quite as intimidating as Max Scherzer. You know where he's got the cyborg guys. Yeah, that's true. And he's giving you the look like you're not pulling me out of this game.

I mean, I don't have that in my back pocket. But I had the sheer belief to let you know. I've got you for one more. All right. I'm feeling good. Well, we'll go to Rocket just a minute for a minute because we talked a lot of Astros this hour. We didn't talk much about the Rockets to win last night. But that was nice to see.

I don't know. Obviously, it was a late night game and you have to be up early. But, man, when Steph Curry started getting hot at the end there, it was just like, oh, here we go. Same old story. Steph Curry is crushing the rock. He's out there chewing his mouthpiece. He's barely getting touched, begging for fouls. And then he's knocking down every single shot. It was a vintage Steph Curry.

He's annoying the hell out of me and crushing the Rockets performance. There's been a lot of, all right, here we go again this season with this team. but then it's like also too it's the team and the jerseys that are on the other side and especially when it's against them you're just like you guys just cannot get past this team can you like you just the mental block when it comes to the warriors is unbelievable and it looked like it was going to be that last night i go the opposite way credit to you for fun in a way because you could have very easily lost that game and we could have been here this morning saying you know what it's the warriors you just you have a mental block when it comes to that team that you just cannot get passed and Alper and Shingoon and company said, no we don't. Yeah, because it didn't even take, when they beat you here the Warriors I'm talking about, there was no Steph Curry or Seth Curry

or Jimmy Butler, of course, has been out. It was like Brandon Pajemski and De Anthony Melton and the boys and he lost in overtime. Guy Santos, a guy named Ghee who beat you in that game. And he damn near did it again last night. You're just like, you know what, all right, hey, enough

out of you, okay? It almost feels like a loss, but they were able to pull it out at the end. Alperin Shingoon. They had the ball with a couple of seconds left, and I really liked the way that they did it. They flashed Alperin Shingun at the top of the key. Then he caught Kevin Durant coming off the screen, running downhill, who gave it back to Shingun,

who flipped up a nice shot, and they were able to get the win and hold off Steph Curry, who threw up a prayer at the end, and that didn't go in. So overall... Go ahead. No, and that's the thing. Like, it was Shingun. I mean, he's gotten to a point now where he gets that little mid-range,

he doesn't miss it. Yeah, he's been a lot better. And then with Steph Curry, it was like, dude, where's the urgency here? Like, what are you doing? Yeah, I thought that would, I was, I was screaming at the TV, double team them, double team. And finally they did at the very end. They did better.

They held off at the right of the last second and then double teamed him late and he had a difficult shot. And it's Steph freaking Curry, so you're still expecting it to go in because it doesn't matter. Like there's two people draped all over him. He's falling away. He's 40 feet away. Steph Curry can make any shot on the planet. Well, I mean, you know, I'm sure some people would have seen, you know, the tip in, go back in and be like, oh, oh, God, you know, they lost.

But Matt Thomas was the surest of them all. I was listening to him, as I'm falling asleep. Yeah. And he's like, not in time. Not going to be good. So I was like, all right, Matt, I like the confidence. There you go. So they're able to get the win.

Now, they're one game behind the Denver Nuggets. They are in the five spot. The Lakers and Nuggets are tied 12 games behind the Thunder. I believe the Lakers have the tiebreaker between those two. So it could be the Nuggets in three. You've been wanting the Lakers this whole time because Luca Donch is still out with that grade two hamstring. Apparently he's like leaving the country to try to get some help. Which, by the way, I have a quick off-track question.

How come guys can't take like creatine or over-the-counter GNC supplements, but you can fly to Germany and get some platelet-rich thing where they're taking your blood and wearing it in a machine and re-injecting it back into you, but I can't I can't take vitamins? Why is one legal and one's okay under the steroid policy,

but I can't get this crazy-ass procedure that I can't even get an American, I can go overseas and that's fine. Well, it's like we were talking baseball earlier and Bryce Harper was on with Bussing with the boys. Yeah. And he was like, why can't we do peptides? Why can't you do?

Honestly, the human growth hormone once. It's for recovery. I mean, maybe they get to a point, though, where they're like, all right, hey, look, like we had like a whole crusade against this thing, you know, after 98. So we probably need to be a little consistent on that. So maybe that's kind of the thought on this. Like, it's a bunch of medicine that I don't know. But when I go see the folks over at Centrogenics, maybe I can get a little bit more information about it.

Yeah, who is, who is drawing these lines where platelet rich injections are cool, but I don't know, a little creatine is not. Like, remember, what was it, Ray Lewis? He was taking, like, deer antler spray. Yes. And people were like... For velvet deer antler spray. Yeah.

And people are like, that's performance enhancing. I'm like, I don't even think that anybody has any idea what to test for with that. I think there's not even the scientific basis for... I think it might not even do anything. Yeah, then he started showing up with the nubs like for... Yeah, I thought that was weird. Yeah. That was interesting.

Yeah. And then he started head budding everyone when he was in heat. I thought that was odd as well. He was in the rut. Yeah. Rogan talked about that not too long ago. He was like, can you imagine if we had a rut? Like, society would be nuts.

I don't know what a rut is. That's when deer... It's their time of the year. Oh, okay. I'll take your word for it. All right, thank you for that, Dan. I don't know who's in the rut. But anyways,

Laia, Austin Reeves out, Luca Donchich out. Lakers are free falling. They lost to the freaking Dallas Mavericks. Got crushed. So as of right now, it's looking like possibly Rockets, Lakers, first round, hopefully is a 4-5. I mean, and you probably would be the 4 in that because, I mean, L.A., just with all those injuries.

Yeah, you're a game behind them. There's only, what, four games left at this point. You're a game behind them, plus they have the tiebreaker. So you're almost a game and a half back. So you need to win out with them going like 2 and 2. So I don't know if that's going to necessarily happen. We'll see. But that'd be a great scenario if you can get home court in the first round against the Lakers.

And then we won't talk about what would happen in the second round. Well, I mean, that's the thing. But that's, and we talked about this a little bit earlier on the show with me and Cole. You get to the second round, that's taking a step forward this year, isn't it? It is. It would be, especially with Fred Van Vleet, not playing a second for you all year. And then Stephen Adams being out for most of the season. Stephen Adams being most out of it.

Tari Isan being a sleepwalking through about a month and a half as well. They talked to him. He's all good. Yeah, he talked to him. He's all good. He's been playing a lot better. Dan? Appreciate you hanging out, man.

The best. You know what? I am the best. You're absolutely right. Thank you, Dad. I appreciate you hanging out. We got Brian Bogus-Evick coming up 11 to 1 o'clock here on the Matt Thomas show with Ross without Matt Thomas. We also have you at 713-212-5-790.

7-1-3-21-5-7-90 if you would like to get in. This is the Matt Thomas show with Ross. Our number two of the Matt Thomas show. here on a sports talk 790 with Ross, but without Matt Thomas, he is out traveling with the Houston Rockets. They were late night in Golden

State. Now they head to Phoenix. It's going to be a real late-nighter coming up tomorrow. Rockets and Suns 10 p.m. tip off. Brian Bogus Heavik hanging out for a couple of hours. Bogey appreciate you. You staying up for that late 10 o'clock start for the Houston

Rockets? No, I got my sports fill with four hours of Astros. yesterday. That's fine. All right. Yeah, that was I was looking at that one. You know what the first person I think of is Chandler Rome? Because he always complains about how long the games are. Among other things. Yeah, well, I should

just say he always complains and stops the stop the sentence there, but of course we love Chandler Rome. Frequent guest here, of course, with the A team on Sports Talk 790, generally on Fridays. But yeah, that was a long one yesterday. It was back and forth, did not go the way that we wanted, and a number of angles

to go with the Astros. You guys can get in phone lines are open. 713, 212. 5790. 713, 212. 579. Let's start with the most recent angle of that.

It's Brian Abrayu. I mean, coming in, we knew Josh Hater had the injury that he did, and he was going to miss a little bit of time. And all spring training, I'm sitting there, you're fine. Brian Abraeu back into the bullpen. We're all good. And he hasn't blown a save, which was my prediction. So I'm still good there, except that he just hasn't.

He just hasn't looked like himself yet. The velocity hasn't been. there. I mean, what else are you seeing from him that's just not allowing him to be that Brian and Bray, you know he can be when he's so locked in? Yeah, on paper, it looked like they had about as good a solution as you can have for losing your closer to start the season. He just doesn't look right. And, you know, you have to assume that there's no injury since nobody's alluded to anything being wrong with that. So it starts for me with the fastball. The velocity, it's been better. It's been 96. It was 97. All is fast.

The fastballs were 96-95 yesterday. But the thing is, is that there's not many of them. And he typically throws a lot of fastballs, and it's where he's throwing them. To me, that is most concerning. He usually gets really good extension out to his glove side, dots that outside corner to a right-handed hitter so that he can then set up that big sweeping slider off the corner. He hasn't gotten a fastball to his glove side in any of his outings with any consistency. Everything yesterday, the few fastballs that he threw were more middle, which put the breaking balls more in the middle of the plate. So it's just, it's a mechanical thing.

It's the upper half, lower half being out of sync and the arm dragging a little bit. Anytime you see a pitcher missing on their arm's side, it means that they're flying open a little bit early. He typically opens up pretty early with his lower half, but it's just not right right now. The velocity's not there. The location's not there. and the breaking ball, you know, it's been better than the fastball, but that hasn't even been there. Yeah.

And what is that as far as, I mean, is that something that he can just fix? And it's not, it's always easier we feel like as we're just sitting here. Yeah, why don't he just, okay, his mechanics are off? Why can he just fix that? What is that as far as how quickly can that be diagnosed, fixed? How much work does he have to get in, especially as a guy who is a reliever and doesn't get a, he doesn't know when he's going to be pitching on when he's not? Well, not only does he not know when he's pitching, but he has to be available all the time.

So it's not like you can just take a day and say, hey, I'm going to go out there and throw a 50 pitch bullpen this afternoon and then sit on it for a couple of days. Like a starter would be able to do. So he's got to get his working in the throwing program. But the good thing is, is that once you find it and once you find the feel, it typically falls in line pretty quickly. So I think that as he works through it and it starts to show up in the game, I think it will be there and then be there for good. Brian Bogus Hevick with us here on a Sports Talk 7. I mean, you need it to be.

It's just, it's unfortunate that, I mean, Josh Hader continues to be out and you know that you're going to need to lean on Brian Abrae, and for him to be kind of falling down. This whole season, as of this point, it's not exactly what we thought we were going to be. I mean, coming to, like I said, spring training, storylines. All right, what's going on with the hitting? you've got some of these aging guys. We know Yordon Alvarez is Yordon,

and he's been incredible. We'll get to that. But it's been kind of flipped. I was feeling pretty good about the starting pitching, feeling decent about the back end of the bullpen, and it's been the other way around. That's baseball for us. It's been totally flipped.

From what we were expecting coming into spring training, from what we saw in spring training, to what it's been for 10 games, you know, there aren't really many holes to poke in the offense right now. So that's a good thing. The downside is that they've needed every one of those runs that they've gotten. You know, like everything in baseball, you give it time, things level out, players become who they are. But yeah, it's really different than coming out of spring training when you're saying, hey, all of these starters looked really good.

And we know once the bullpen is fully healthy that it's going to be a seven-inning game and you just hand it over to these guys. And now it's like, you know, we better score three more in the top of the eighth. Otherwise, it's going to get a little daisy. It's been kind of fun, though. Like, 12 to 10 is fun. It's really fun. Yeah, it's great. Look, it's like four, four and a half hours or whatever it is.

But the entertainment is there. Yeah. Like, we're talking with Dan, it's like, you're like the sons with Mike Dantonie and Steve Nash. They're going to lose, they're going to lose 140 to 130. They're going to win one 40 to 30. So at least, like last year when it was all those close losses and it was some two to ones. and they would get 0 for 7 with runners in scoring position. Like that was frustrating.

It almost feels like 10 to 12 in the 10th inning. It hurts. But I was like, okay, at least I was entertained and we saw some fight. They're very entertaining games. But also remember, you know, there were times last season when three or four runs, be down three or four runs early and it was like, okay, this game's over. Let's start thinking about tomorrow. They got down four runs in whatever was the sixth inning.

And it was like, this game's not even close. close to over. So yeah, it's great. It helps me in Sacramento, too. When the ball flies and the sun is everywhere, somehow the sun was in every outfielder's eyes through the whole game, yeah. Yeah, by the way, yeah, Jake Myers with that big drop ball. What was that? Was that in the fifth, I think it was, and three runs scored? Can you explain that? Everybody went to the, why doesn't he have sunglasses on card?

Can you explain that? Well, sunglasses don't help when the ball is in the sun. It's not going to completely block out the sun. And the problem is when you have the sun that's right over your head as an outfielder, what you have to do is you have to get an angle on that ball to get the ball out of the sun. So you have to get around it to a degree to allow it to come out of the sun on the way down, which you can do if the balls hit high enough and you have enough time to get underneath it and you're camped and you can kind of maneuver a little bit.

That play, he didn't have that luxury. He was getting back to the wall. He was just trying to get to the spot where he could try to make a play. and hoping it came out on the way down and then it gets to the point to where you're just hoping not to get hit in the forehead. Yeah, that's what it looked like. You're like, I don't want to be on like a sports center,

not top 10. Can we just at least let this fall to the ground? That is a bad, bad feeling. When you finally realize that, oh, man, it's not going to come out of the center. Oh, man, it's not going to come out of the... You don't know if you're supposed to cover up your face or cover up down low.

It's bad. Yeah, these kids like Jonathan don't know. We used to have the like the VHS tapes of like baseball bloopers and we were just run and watch those over and over again. You didn't want to end up on the blooper tape, Jonathan. That's what you're worried about. But now it's on social media, I guess. Yeah, you take one ball to the forehead and everybody's watching that for 25 years.

How many times have we seen Jose Canseco have a ball, that ball hit him in the head and go over the fence? Still see it a couple times a year. Exactly. It lives in infamy forever. I don't think that ball wasn't the sun. So maybe, yeah, no, it was. It was a night game. So that's a little less excusable.

Did you see the college one? I think it was over the weekend. I can't remember what it was. Oh, the Juko. Was it Juko? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's like 10 feet away from the, from the fence, and it hit off his head and went over the fence. That's my dream as a hitter.

It's just a 380-foot fly-out. Yeah, exactly. I think it was like the right center, too. And it just bounced off his head and went flying over the fence. And that's a home run. That's all good. I take it. I will take it.

You take whatever you can get. That's all right. They all count the same. put it down as a exit Vilo of 110 or something on your scorecard and it's all good but yeah that was just crazy the sun that was out there and I don't know I guess it's just the time of day

in Sacramento but it was it was unfortunate the baseball was baseballing this weekend you had that stuff happening yiner Diaz dropped the ball I mean it was crazy Jose Altuve was making plays there's a bunch of crazy stuff happened this weekend the field stuff it wasn't just the Astros there were some plays that the the A's left fielder

he lost the ball in the sun in one of the games. One of the infielers thought a ball was going to come up and it stayed down. I think you can't understate the difference in a major league park and a minor league park and the difference of having a third deck and how that affects the wind and the sun and the elements and the fact that you're having 80 games played on a field versus the 150 or whatever that they're having played on there as there's a minor league season being played too. So it's just the conditions are not normal. And when you're coming in, especially as a visiting team, you know, dropping for three days and then trying to figure out this field and how it works,

there's going to be some weird that we saw it last year in some of the raised games in Tampa at Steinbrenner Field. And it's going to happen all year again in Sacramento. There's just going to be some odd games. Yeah, that's what we had Cam Smith on in spring training. I think Matt asked him what was the, what's like the worst place to play. He said Sacramento. He didn't even flinch. He didn't even hesitate at all. He didn't hesitate at all. He's like Sacramento. And if you ask any outfielder, you know, where's the worst place to play, they always say spring training.

It's the spring training fields because they're big, they're windy. There's no third deck to block the wind. And that's essentially what you're playing at in these minor league teams. And also, right, I guess it's true that the third deck, it's almost like the way in a batter's eye you can see the ball. And so there's nothing to, you just see sky and potentially clouds and it's just easier to lose the ball. It's hard enough to find a baseball in a clear blue. day game sky when it's straight up in the air and you can kind of get under it. But when you don't have that third deck and you're trying to track it all the way from the bat.

And then you have, you know, like on Jake's play yesterday, you take your eyes off the ball to find the wall. And then you're going back up trying to find a tiny little dot. It's, yeah, it's tough. Yeah. It was just a wild weekend in Sacramento. But Astros didn't go the way that you wanted. But the good news is you were scoring some runs. So we'll get on that offense and what's been clicking for the Astros.

coming up in the next segment with Brian Bogussevic. You want to talk to him? You want to talk some Astros, baseball, anything you guys want to get into. We'll talk some Tulane football as well. 713-212-5-790 is the phone number you guys want to get in. 7-13-212-5-7-90. The Matt Thomas Show with Ross. Without Matt Thomas continues after this short break.

1116 in the a.m. here on Sports Talk 790. Welcome back to the Matt Thomas show with Ross. Without Matt Thomas. Thomas with Brian with us until 1 o'clock here on the show appreciate you hanging out Brian talking some Astros baseball huh how things are going for you personally you're doing all right everything okay does anybody care no okay okay let's move on it's all good fine I was just trying to know how I was trying to be nice I thought you were going to pour out all your problems and everything you've been going on but that's okay maybe later maybe later maybe during the break

all right so we were talking of course about the Asheros and the pitching and dealing with Sacramento but let's talk about what we really want to talk about what we really want to talk about what everybody's excited about, and that's this offense. We can go micro case by case. Of course, we know Yordon Alvarez has been great, but just overall, are you seeing just a different philosophy with the new hitting coaches, or is it just some guys that are playing up to their potential?

What overall do you, this has been the key to success for the Astros offense? A little bit of all of that. I think the most, the thing that stands out the most has been a real commitment. to getting a good pitch to hit. And that sounds overly simplistic, but one through nine guys have been really focused on, especially early in the count, not going after, obviously, chasing pitches out of the zone,

but not going after pitchers' pitches out of the zone, not being quick outs, not being easy outs. And what it has resulted in is a ton of guys on base, a ton of long counts, a ton of high pitch counts for opposing pitchers, and just a lot of situations where you have opportunities to score runs. And guys individually and the team as a whole, it seems like had gotten away from that a little bit. It had gotten really, really aggressive in the last couple of years.

And this looks more reminiscent of some of the teams in the 2017 to 2020. 2021, 2022 range, where it was just a nightmare and a battle for pitchers to get through that lineup every day. You've also been seeing a big uptech not only just for the Astros, but it's been in baseball in general is with the walks. How much do you think that is influenced by the ABS system? Maybe a little bit. You know, the information that Major League Baseball put out before the season started when it was talking about ABS and introducing it to everybody, the strike zone is different. the strike zone is going to be judged differently than it had been historically. So it's an adjustment period for umpires.

It's adjustment period for pitchers and hitters also. I think that ABS probably has a little bit to do with players' willingness to take a pitch in a two-strike count because the philosophy as a hitter was always, you know, don't leave it in an umpire's hands. With two strikes, if it's close, swing. because you know you just want to take away that element of you know maybe having a a bad call go against you but now if you're pretty confident your strike zone judgment you know a three two pitch go ahead and take it if you think it's an inch off because you have the ability to challenge it and be right if you're

right so i think that has a little bit to do with i think it's just the way pitching is moving guys are maximizing stuff constantly guys are chasing velocity chasing spin there's going to be more strikeouts, so there's going to be more walks with it as well, and that's just kind of the nature of. I think especially early, you know, offseason throwing programs used to be a lot of playing catch, stretching it out, building arm strength to then get up on the mound and try to really get dialed in. Most of an offseason training program for pitchers now is a lot of almost, you know, the pitching version of powerlifting, trying to throw harder, trying to get more spin, trying to get a sharper breaking ball so it's a little bit more

throwy versus pitchy and I think maybe we're going to have that transition in the first month or so. And I guess that means also at the expense of control and which we're seeing a lot of issues with that. Absolutely. You know, guys are no longer trading if the tradeoff is 92, 93

on the corner or 9697 in the middle of the plate, guys are choosing 9697 in the middle of the plate but as you try to really ramp up and max effort and really get behind that baseball, you're going to spray a lot of balls too. Yeah, I think what we're seeing too is a lot of guys are getting, or a lot of umpires are losing challenges and this might come out of the, uh, I mean, just from, from years of tradition

was on a three oh count, generally, strike zone gets a little bit bigger. Guys get to the benefit of the doubt, but we're seeing a lot of challenges and guys are walking on that. So I guess that's probably leading to an uptick of the walks as well. Yeah, there's, you know, there's no leeway anymore. A strike is a strike and a ball is a ball and it doesn't matter what the case. Imagine that. Imagine that. But, but, but, you know, there's no, there's no, it doesn't matter what the count is. It doesn't matter what the score is. It doesn't, you know, the only, actually the only scenario there is if a position player is pitching,

you can't challenge in that situation, which is. That's fine. We're all good with that. Let's get this game. Let's get out of here. But yeah, you know, the strike zone doesn't float anymore and it doesn't depend on what the scenario is. So you're going to, you know, you're not going to have those kind of bailout calls to maybe keep the game moving or keep the flow of the game.

And, you know, if you can't find it, you can't find it. Specifically on El Tuve. I have a, I don't know. it's just a hairbrain theory. What do you think about this? Is that he's always been somebody that's expanding the strike zone and swinging at everything. And he's been a lot better with that. Like, do you think part of that maybe either subconsciously or consciously has been,

it feels like the strike zone has never been right for him his whole career because of how short he is, literally. And I think now that it's more accurate, it's maybe easier for him to kind of maybe lay off some pitches. Maybe, you know, maybe in theory when you're thinking about it as a hitter, you know, before the guy i can't imagine anybody standing in the batters box being any kind of conscious of what the 53% measure is on their body or whatever the number is um i think what is real though is when you go into a season trying to do something differently whether it be from an approach standpoint or a mechanical standpoint or whatever and you get immediate positive results you will lean

into it even harder. And it's obvious that he came into the season, wanting to see more pitches, wanting to be more selective, wanting to stay in the middle of the field. And it worked really well the first series or two and he's going to continue to lean into it because it's working. Yeah, it's been great to say. I mean, he's got to be a big

part of this. We're talking about, Yordon's going to be Yordon as long as he's in the lineup. And if they're going to want to make the playoffs and then go anywhere in the playoffs, Yorda needs to be out there. That's like, it's very keep it, simple stuff. But Jose Altuvae, to where we've seen a decline for him in three straight years in terms of OPS, played a lot of games last year, just some of the times, especially

with runners and scoring positions, it wasn't looking the same. Power was there. He had, what, 25, 26 home runs or whatever it was, but it wasn't the hitting. And it just short sample size, of course. We know it's baseball, but it's, it's looking great. And the early returns couldn't be better. Yeah, and I think there's a couple things at play in there. First of all, you know, For a guy who's getting a little bit older, as much as you would love the Astros to play all through October, having the extended offseason that they haven't had for, you know, 10 years now probably helps a little bit in terms of just how you feel coming into a season. Also, you know, there were times last year where it looked like his timing wasn't right, his mechanics were a little bit of, it's hard to go through large-scale hitting adjustments in season. because sometimes you have to take a couple steps back to take a step forward and you don't want to take a couple steps back when the games count when the team needs you to produce. So you know, you get to a point every once in a while where it's like, hey, this is what my swing and my timing is for now and I've just got to deal with it and try to figure it out.

But the biggest thing that I think for everybody and Jose especially is having a healthy Yorda on, having a fully functioning offense, nobody has to be more than what that. They are. Nobody has to try to be a power hitter or try to drive in runs or try to do the, you just go up there and have a good at bat. And you just do your thing and you get good pitches to hit. And there's seven or eight other guys doing the same thing. You know, when guys are hurt or guys aren't performing and it's only one or two guys who are really giving you a chance to score runs on any given night, you try to do too much. And then, you know, you get away from what makes you successful. Yeah, it's been fun, man. It's been interesting. And we have, I mean,

mentioned Christian Walker who's been hitting. What are you saying this different from last year this year? A guy that looks comfortable, a guy that looks relaxed, first and foremost, he's not trying to justify a contract. He's not trying to prove that a slow start was just a slow start, and that's not who he is. His swing is in a very good spot. He's into the zone very quickly and efficiently. He's catching up to velocity better than he did last year. But he also looks like a guy who's just comfortable being a part of the lineup and not having to prove that he is worthy of whatever. Yeah, we interviewed him in spring training and he talked about losing. The funny thing is because everybody's always either lost weight or gained weight or put on weight or change this or change.

I'm toe tapping. Now I'm not toe tapping. And it all kind of just gets lost. And until you see somebody go out there, because we've heard 100 stories of this guy gained or lost weight, and it doesn't matter. It just doesn't seem to have any sort of impact. But it seems to be the hope that all these changes made for Christian Walker would improve so far. The early returns are awesome. Yeah, and whether it is a direct result of losing some weight or not.

With placebo? The fact of the matter is that his bat is getting into the hitting zone quicker than it was last year. And that could be because he's a little bit lighter. That just could be cleaned up mechanics. That could be probably a combination of both. No oblique injury. Exactly. He talked about that.

He didn't want to make excuses all year, but he talked about that. Yeah, if you're going to have an oblique injury and you're basically missing all of spring training, you're going to be a little bit off. And I wouldn't be shocked if he was dealing with pain, especially at start the season. And coming off an injury like that, even if you are fully healed, you're going to be a little bit conscious of it. And if you're not comfortable, you know, rotating from the core, what are you going to do? You're going to swing a little bit wider. You're going to be a little bit longer.

and then all of a sudden, 96, 97 is getting on you just a little bit faster. But seeing him drive fastballs early this year is about as good of a sign for things to come as you could hope for. Yeah, it's been great. Again, we'll say it's early. But one of the, I mean, one of the question marks was, is it just declined for Christian Walker or was it just a bad season? And so far, he's been bouncing back in a big way. It's been huge. And it can also, it also changes the perception of what we saw from him in the,

second half because he was much better in the second half last year and it could have just been like you could look at it and say okay that's a couple of months which guy is the real guy but now with the way he's backing it up to start the year this year maybe you say okay that was just a slow start to a season last year the guy that we expected to show up showed up in the second half and he's here again it's also a good way to stay in the lineup every day when you got an infield log jam yep that's also a good motivation you there's there's eventually you know it hasn't gotten to that point yet, but eventually there's going to be somebody sitting every once in a while and

you don't want it to be... Christian Walker says, it ain't going to be me. All right. Not right now. I'll take a quick break here. On the Bad Thomas show with Ross, you guys want to get in. You can't. 713-213-2-2-1-790 is the phone number. 7-1-3-212-5-7-90. You can also send tweets to At SportsRV, Instagram at SportsRV as well.

We are the Matt Thomas show with Ross without Matt Thomas, with you until 2 o'clock. 1132 in the a.m. here on Sports Talk 790, the Matt Thomas show with Ross, without Matt Thomas, Brian Bogussevich, gracious enough to hang out with us. Not an extremely late start in Colorado, so that's good. 7.40 p.m. Astros, and you'll be on the coverage. We're going to SCHN, correct?

We're not going Space City Home Network. We're trying to tighten it up. SCHN, it's something to do with branding. Yeah, because of the app, right. Because that's what the app is called, so we're going to SCHN. S-C-H-N-plus. Really rolls off the tongue. It does. S-C-H-N-plus.

All right, so you'll be on the whole series. That should be fun. Yeah, I can do Mountain Time. Yeah. The West Coast Games? Honestly, yeah. Honestly, I think Mountain Time is good for, well, maybe not necessarily baseball and basketball, the night sports, but, like, for football, I feel like it's perfect.

Yeah. Yeah, no, there's a little late afternoon start. That's not bad. Yeah, it'll be like, I mean, yeah, being in Mountain Time, not us being games for Mountain Time. But, yeah, I think I pulled it up like last year. I think you really mashed in Colorado in your career as a Houston Astro. So maybe you should have just signed with the Rockies. You should have signed with the Rockies.

Stuck around for a while longer. Pitching, not so hot for the Rockies, but hitting, things go pretty well. And I think I remember asking you last year. So you're in Sacramento and the ball flies out there. Then you go to a series in Colorado. what is it like for you mentally as a hitter to try to be cognizant of that or not try to not think of it at all? No, it's really best case scenario because after about the first time you're there when, you know, the first batting practice, it's like, oh my God, this is awesome.

It's actually the best place to hit from a mental standpoint because you know the ball is going to fly wherever you hit it. you know, hey, if I barrel a ball, oppo gap, it's going to go out. I don't have to try to give a little bit of extra juice. I don't have to try to pull it. So it really like, it settles you more than anything in terms of, you know, you're not going to be up there trying to hit the ball a mile because it's just going to go if you get it.

And then on top of it, it is a massive, massive outfield. Outfielders, it's tough to play there. You have to cover so much ground, the ball flies. So you're always playing deep as an out. outfielder, which means there's a ton of hits in front of the outfielders from a hitting standpoint. It's just, it's the best. It is hitting heaven. It is awesome out there. In your career, Brian Bogusevic, you're basically Babe Ruth at Coorsfield. 423, couple of home runs, OPS of 1198.

I bet that that's one of those things where it's like when you look up some guys' individual season numbers from the late 90s. And it's like, oh, this guy has a thousand. an OPS and he was 12th in MVP voting. I bet that's like an OPS plus of like 102, barely barely above average. I don't see the plus numbers. But yeah, relative to the rest of your career, it's a 244. Yeah. So 244. We should just got you in Coorsfield, man. He'd been all right. Yeah, I saw something one time it was like if Barry Bond's, it was like Barry Bond's career with the numbers corrected if he played at Coors Field his whole career. 900 home runs.

No, yeah, it was literally something. Because San Francisco is the polar opposite. It's the worst place to hit. The wind blows in. It's cold. It's huge. Yeah. What he did, what he did, the fact that he did what he did there is probably the most

impressive part of it. Yeah. I'm trying to find, I was literally trying to find it just on the fly right now. But it was some kind of crazy graphic. Like, yeah, he would have like 850, like 900 home runs. His OPS would be, I mean, but his numbers are like that if you, look, it looks like it's, he was part of a circus when you go look at back at Barry Bonds and the numbers that he had. It's comical and it came up for me the other day. We were, we were

in awe of what Yordaun has done to start the season for 10 games or whatever. And so I, I kind of checked it against Barry Bonds' numbers. I think it's like the 2004 season. And he basically did for a whole season what Yordawn's doing right now. It's insane. He's, I don't understand. It's, it's so mind-boggling. Even as you said, like the number is a little inflated in that era and stuff, but it was just crazy. But yeah, on to Yorda, I mean, he's hitting 400. Watch out Teddy. That's good. Watch out Teddy ball game. All right. OPA. He's leading and basically everything. On base, slugging 1478 OPS. For those who don't know,

league average OPS plus is 100. He's at 319. So he's more than three times better than an average an average hitter. So it's like he gets three at bats in one. Does that work? I don't know how the math works on that. What, I mean, what are you seeing besides Yordon is just incredible? Well, first of all, it puts into perspective just how much he was dealing with last year. As much time as he missed just what he was still trying to fight through when he was actually on the field,

because he never looked like anything close to this. But he's one of those guys who he can just. go to another level. And the reason he can do it is not just because he's such a great power hitter. It's because he's such a great hitter. And teams are not giving him anything to hit, yet he's still on everything somehow. His swing decisions on pitches that are either right on the corner or an inch or two off, you know, he's right almost every time. The home run that he hit yesterday, after getting pitched around for three games, a ball just shows up in the middle of the plate and he's all over it and hits it for a home run. I mean, that's, that is Barry Bond's type of

stuff. And I mean, it's, this is what happens when one of the best hitters in the world gets completely locked in. And man, I, I don't know how long it's going to keep, keep up like this, but I'm here for it. Yeah, he'll slump at some point. But what do you think overall, one of the things I've always been a big proponent of. I'm not saying this is doing anything with the success. Just talking in general. I love it when he, Winnie Bat's second. It's something that Joe's been trying to get done and then sometimes he's fluctuated from two to three. It kind of seems like he's not super happy about it, especially when he has to come in from the field. Sometimes when this like Jose Altuva swings at the first pitch and like, hey, I'm already up.

Like, give me a second guys. But he's been fine in that second spot. I love batting him second. Crazy idea. Best hitter gets more played appearances. Imagine that. Maximizing your greatest assets. It's a good fit.

And, you know, you have a guy. hitting in front of him for the most part in Jeremy Pena, who's on base all the time, but also a dynamic base runner. So he can, you know, it's basically in scoring position from first base with Yordon up. You have, you have guys at the bottom of the lineup who do get on base. So when you turn it over the second time, there's a good chance that there's a trap. You know, he basically becomes a three or four hitter with, with a couple of guys in front of him who can, who can get on base a little bit.

So, yeah, it's a good fit. You know, every once in a while, you're going to be running into the first base dugout from left field and a road series and you're going to be up before you get your batting gloves on but I'll trade that for the extra 20, 25 at Batsy gets being one spot ahead.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's really at the end of the day. It's just a first inning thing and then you could be coming up whenever after the first ending. Just make sure if he does get on base in the first inning that they wipe down the home plate. We don't need him sliding on anything, getting hurt. Let's preserve Yorda. And it's going to make,

It makes the three-hole all that more important for the Astros. That's going to be something to kind of watch and monitor throughout the course of the season is who hits behind Yordaum? Because we've seen already, you know, in three series, none of the teams really want to mess with him if they don't have to. So, you know, is somebody going to really settle in and take that spot and get comfortable there? Is it going to be whoever is swinging the hottest bat is going to be there to try to provide that protection and maximize Yorda being on base all. time. It'll be interesting to see this. Just another kind of wrinkle in, you know, watching what the lineup is every day. But

yeah, having healthy Yordon, it changes it changes everything. Yeah. And you mentioned putting those guys behind there. How much, I feel like we, certainly, it's good fodder for us here on the radio to talk about a guy being a three or four, whatever, fluctuating. I mean, do we

overblow that or is that important for you guys in knowing where you are, but also it's like, I'm going to come up when I'm going to come up. I think it's overblown. You know, guys like to have routines and they like to be settled and they like to know what's going on. But there's so much communication, you know, either after a game leading into tomorrow or, you know, a text message sent in the morning saying, hey, you're going to be in the three hole or the four hole. You know, guys have a pretty good handle on what's going on. As long as the communication is there, it's not really an issue.

Really what guys want to know is, am I going to be in or out on a regular basis so that you can prepare for the game? and where your name is in the lineup is kind of, you know, whatever. All right, Brian Bogussevick, will us until 1 o'clock here on Sports Talk, 790. You guys want to get in, talk some stroes. You can. 7-1-3-790 is the phone number. 7-1-3-212-5-7-90. We'll continue with you up until 2 o'clock is the show.

We'll bring the news at noon to you at 1 o'clock. Jonathan Allen will bring you the news at noon coming up at 1 o'clock here on Sports Talk 790. a ton of stuff to get to here on the Matt Thomas show with Ross. All right. 1148 a.m. here on Sports Talk, 790. Matt Thomas Show with Ross with you until 2 o'clock. Phone lines open. Brian Bogussev is hanging out. You got some baseball questions for him.

I know you do. 713-212-5-790 is the phone number. 7-13-212-5-7-90. We've been talking about the Astros and on the field. I hadn't talked much about what happened off the field. Hunter Brown shoulder strain hits the IL, not exactly what you want to hear. Yesterday, Dana Brown saying he doesn't expect it to be a whole lot of time, but also we've heard a lot of optimism from Dana Brown.

So, I mean, we'll take that for what it is at face value. But that was not fun news to wake up to yesterday or to hear early in the morning yesterday. No, not. It's early for me. I get up late. Not good news. and out of nowhere because we hadn't heard anything about it.

He didn't seem like he was nursing anything. We actually, you know, after his second start against the Red Sox kind of saying, all right, they're slow playing this a little, but he threw like 78 pitches through six innings. He came out and it was, all right, we're kind of have the kid gloves on here early in the season and then we find this out.

This is a tough one because as important, as Yordon Alvarez is to the offense, that's what Hunter Brown is to the pitching staff. He is the known quantity. He is the guy who we know is the ace of a staff. We know is going to go out there and eat up innings. We know is going to be the most reliable guy to, you know, end a losing streak when his turn comes through the rotation and to have that thrown into flux. and, you know, optimism, fine, but it's still an arm issue for a starting pitcher, which is always caused for a concern. So, you know, it's not good.

Yeah, that's great. But, I mean, at least we knew that this was something that they were prepared for as far. Not Hunter Brown injury, but pitching injuries. Well, that's the thing, is you build depth in the organization and the starting pitching role because you're going to need it. You're going to have guys get banged up. You're going to go to a six-man rotation at some point.

You're going to have guys who get worn out a little bit and their innings start to build up. So you give him a break. But that's all fine and good. But none of those guys are Hunter Brown. There's only a handful of guys at his level in all of Major League Baseball. You're not going to replace him with a like quantity. So can you absorb it for a little while? Sure.

You know, there's plenty of depth. There's plenty of guys at AAA that have come up here. and done a good job. And Spencer, again, he's been throwing the ball really well. And Colton Gordon's down there. Jason Alexander are down there, and they did a nice job last year. But they're not number ones in the rotation. And, you know, a combination of the offense is hitting and scoring a ton of runs.

And, you know, you've got Colorado now. You're going to get Colorado again when you come home. St. Louis is on the schedule here coming up a little bit. So you've got a softer spot in the schedule on paper, minus Seattle at the end of this road trip. So you can absorb it for a little while, but if he's out for an extended a period of time, it's a big blow.

To be determined, hopefully not too long. Dana Brown sounds optimistic, so we'll see on that front. 713-212-5-790 is the phone number you want to get in. Scott in River Oaks is up on the phone lines. What's up, Scott? You know what? This is going to be my fault.

Yep, yep, I know. I restarted the computer and it went to the wrong interview. There we go. Scott, go ahead and start over. Can y'all hear me? Yeah. Yeah, so I was just calling about Hunter Brown. So yeah, a huge, obviously huge loss.

These baseball injuries, man, may linger so much longer than we would like to see. It's definitely frustrating. And I'm not holding out hope that it's going to be, you know, at least the next 30 days that we won't see them, if not a little bit longer than that. But bigger picture with our pitching staff in the way our offense is set up, you know, with ESOC coming back, hopefully this series, if Hunter Brown's going to miss an extended period of time or if there's pitchers in our rotation

that are continuing to not be what we need them to be, do you think it opens up the door if we are going to continue trade talks for him down the road that we might be more open to an arm than not just outfield bat, especially if, you know, it's a very small sample size, but low perfeito is played that really well. Cam Smith is obviously coming along nicely. Bryce Matthews is hitting well,

and then Christian Walker has been unbelievable to start to hear. Over the long term, ESOx probably the third best hitter on our team, but if there's truly not a place to put him, and we're going to be struggling on the pitching staff, do you think we might be open to not just an outfield bat and moving him for a starting arm? But I'll hang up and listen. Thanks, guys.

Yeah, I think, you know, Dana Brown has always been very open about, he's always looking to make the team better and he's always in the market for starting pitching. Those are things that he's always wanting to do. The question is going to become, what type of starting pitcher are you getting? Because Isak Parades is an elite bat. And if you're not getting elite talent coming back, I don't think you can make a trade just because you need a pitcher. A pitcher is not a fair trade for a very good hitter. So, yeah, I think it, you know, if there are injuries and needs for starting pitching,

you can start looking at how do you acquire more starting pitching or what do you need to do? And I think Dana Brown would always be open to high-end starting pitching. But as we saw with the way some of these off-season trade talks materialized, you know, teams know what they're dealing with. And if they know you're really trying to move a player, if they know that you're really in need of starting pitching. and if they know that you're really in need of, you know, whatever it is a team might need, it's probably not going to be in Apples for Apple's trade, in which case you don't make trades just to make trades. Yeah, and I think even though, yeah, you're missing Hunter Brown now,

we'll see how long is going to be. We don't know what the prognosis. We don't have any kind of timeline. And we'll see because he's going to miss some time. And, I mean, going straight to the IL, the first we heard of this is something that's not inspiring a ton of confidence right now. But as we just mentioned, like you have options. I mean, Spencer Arrigetti, is he Hunter Brown?

No, he's not. But he's a guy can go get you out. So the way that the bats are hitting right now, you can still hold down the fort. Imai was good in his last start. So, I mean, I think you can piece together a rotation and hold down the fort. Like you said, with some of the lesser competition coming up, I don't think this presses, just to answer Scott's question. I don't think this presses them in the direction of trying to get a pitcher. No, and no pitcher that you could bring in would replace Hunter straight up.

So the answer to how do we weather the storm of Hunter Brown being out for a while is, number one, the rest of the pitching rotation kind of just turns it up a notch and starts to get a little bit better. But it's also complementary baseball. It's the offense carrying the team for a while, and they've been doing it for the first 10 games of the season. If they can do it for another month or so, maybe, you know, if that's the timeline that's Hunter's on, and he comes back and by the time he's back and at the top of the rotation, the offense has carried the team.

Yeah, the good news is you're six and four with the pitching being in the state that it has been. So how much will everything sustain is the beauty of baseball? Two weeks can mean absolutely nothing. Get to turn into the worst offense and baseball. I don't want to put that out there. But things turn all the time and small sample sizes and all that type of stuff.

So a lot of baseball to be played. It's why when you're putting together a team, you're trying to put together a dynamic team and a team that can win a lot of different ways. You don't want to be so dependent on pitching or you don't want to be so dependent on hitting because over the course of a season, no matter how good your staff is or how good your lineup is, you're going to run into ups and downs and you want to have times when the pitchers can carry you. You want to have times when the offense carries you. And then you want to have some days when it's all working and you can beat anybody.

Well, if Yordon just wants to hit 400 and OPS 1400 all season long, that'd be awesome. That would go a long way in terms of covering up some more. Yeah. He's got, I think he's hit 90 from left field. How's that arm looking? Maybe he can do it all. He's the next show. Hey, there's let's go, baby.

I think, I think the medical staff would put the... Kind of gosh on that. All right, fine. All right, quick break here on the Matt Thomas show with Ross. One hour in the books, it has flown by. Hour number two with Brian Bogusevick is coming up. You guys want to get in. You can.

713. 212-5-790 is the phone number. 7-13-212-5-7-90. Continue talking some stroves with Brian Bogussevick after this quick break. This is the Matt Thomas Show with Ross. 1201. Is it hour number three of the show already? Flying by on a Monday.

The Matt Thomas show with Ross. Without Matt Thomas, he is out traveling with the Houston Rockets. They were up late last night in Golden State. taking on the warriors who tried to come back. Steph Curry, I just need Steph Curry to retire. I've been haunted by him. It's like Albert Pooholz and the Astros. It's like, it's enough.

Get that guy out of my life. Get that guy out. And then they literally switch to the American League. And then he goes to the, he's with the Angels. It's like it's too much, man. Come on. Just ready to move on. Not good.

Yeah, that's basically, Steph Curry is like the Michael Myers. He won't die. He won't go down. And he's trying to take down the ash, to the rockets. But they were able to get the one. 117 to 116 win last night in Golden State.

They have a late, I have never heard of this, but it's on NBC Peacock. I guess they got an 8 o'clock game or something. It's a 10 p.m. start for Rockets and Sun on Tuesdays, on Tuesday, tomorrow. Get your coffee ready if you're going to make it up for that one. I am so glad they don't have a baseball version of whatever makes that happen. I mean, yeah, there's 9.30 baseball sometimes. And now with the pitch clock, it's not that bad although yesterday. What was the game time yesterday for that?

I think it was 401. That's actually not that bad for a 10 to 12 to 10 extra inning game. No, before the pitch clock, three and a half was just a regular day. Yeah, 4 to 3 on the mound visits. I mean, just in terms of all that, I think ABS is adding only like a minute or two to the games. Unless CB Buckner's back there and he's getting challenged. you have to challenge nine calls a game. I think in all the testing in the minor leagues,

it came out to be an average of four challenges per game, and they take about 15. So a minute, a couple of minutes at most. I think the coolest thing about it so far is the in-stadium drama that it's built. You know, the showing of the graphic on the scoreboard. I think, you know, once we get to the point, to where it's a big call and a playoff scenario.

Slow play it a little bit and everybody it's going to be fun. The drama, like when you're watching the World Series of poker and it's like a big all-in and they don't, they wait like five minutes to put out the river. It's like, guys, can we just run the hand? We've also, we've also, we've seen

it once or twice so far this year, but it's going to become a thing is when an umpires having an off night and he's had three or four overturned and then there's another challenge and another challenge. And the fans start to catch on, it's going to be, it's going to get bad.

I like how they kind of peacock and get confident of. Call is confirmed. Yeah. How you like me now? What's up? Why don't you come at me again? Come at the king. You best not miss. Some umpire trash talk. That'd be actually fun. So we saw it not, I mean, not trash talking, but so, so yesterday both teams

ran out of challenges during the game. About halfway through both the Astros and the A's had had blown their challenges. there were no challenges left. But once you go into extra innings, everybody gets one back. I don't know if the A's players didn't know that or what. Maybe. But in the 10th inning,

because I forgot. Pitcher threw a pitch that he thought was a strike. And he's kind of thrown his hands up. And the umpire ripped his max off. And he was like, well, just challenge it. I like that.

Yeah. It's interesting. The long-term dynamics of this, I find very interesting. What were you in favor? Brian Bogus-Evick, by the way, with us on Sports Talk 790 until 1 o'clock. Where did you stand on the implementation? Because it feels like there's also a different dynamic because when we were interviewing

players as a spring training fan fest, you have the younger guys who have experienced it and more open to it. Then you have the older guard who like the human element because that's just what you've been used to, their whole careers. and a lot of people, we got a number of answers of, yeah, don't look up. And we got a couple of answers of guys who say, hey, do either do it all the way or don't do it at all? I think they found a sweet spot. And I at first was in the camp of do it all the way.

If we can get them all right, why don't we just get them all right? I'm still there. But it doesn't just affect the balls and strikes the call. And really what it does is it affects catchers and guys who have spent their whole careers pitch framing and accumulating a skill that is a valuable thing. And then you just completely take that out. Oh, you mean tricking umpires. If you completely eliminated umpires and everything was a robocall. and it was just on the box,

you'd see catchers now basically standing up out of a crouch to catch the ball to then be able to have a quicker pop time down to second. So it would just change the way the catching position is played, and I'm not for that. So I think they found a sweet spot. Maybe at some point there will be more challenges available. They'll tweak it, but I like the way it's been implemented. I like it too, but I feel like I'm still.

in favor of getting. I know obviously there'll be ramifications and there'll be stuff that we're not even thinking about like you mentioned changing with the catchers and stuff like that, but I would even be in favor of maybe even a slight tweaking of the strike zone because if it went full, it would really, really favor the batters and maybe even a little bit

too much because we're already seeing that. We were mentioned with Dan, I think before you got in here, I think it's like 3.78 walks per game per team, and that's more than since 2000. Yeah, it's funny. It's the most in Major League Baseball in a year since 2000.

It was a little surprising to me when they put out the numbers for how they measured the strike zone on all the hitters. So in spring training, they bring all the hitters in, they measure them, and the strike zone is based off of your height. And the top of the strike zone was, it was like 53. Something percent of your height is the top of the strike zone. And, you know, you're always taught that the strike zone is essentially the letters of the jersey. I measured it out where that percentage is on me standing straight up. It's like belly button. And so that's what, and I get it.

It's when you're in your hitting position and you're down in a firing position. But the strike zone is not as big as you would anticipate. And I think, you know, pitchers are still adjusting a little bit. But maybe that's the tweet that's made is just the size of the strike zone. Yeah, just maybe like a slight recalibration and then go from there and then go. I would love to have the full ABS just because just for a very simple fact, you get every call right.

And the technology is going to be installed in every single stadium. You can do it. You have it. You're going to have the ability because I think it was like $26,000. It was almost 27,000 missed calls last year. And what if you can make that zero?

That'd be cool. I think it was some close to 12 or 1,300 strikeouts that should not have been strikeouts last year. You're getting closer. I like the ABS system as well, but I would also like just, as a practical matter. You have the technology, use it.

I think they will use it to a greater degree. I think when this season is said and done, they'll have the data on how many pitches were challenged, how many were overturned, how many pitches that weren't challenged would have been overturned, that's probably going to be the number that they're really going to look at. But at the same time, you know, it's a lot of insignificant calls that maybe don't really need to be changed.

So that would be outside of the challenge. So you'd have to completely eliminate. eliminate the challenge system and just go to a straight robo-ump system in that case. Yeah. I guess we'll see what happens and where it goes. This is at least a step in the right direction. Overall right now, 55% of calls are getting overturned. The batters are getting better.

First week, I think they're at like 43%. Now they're up to 50% in overturns and catchers are at 60%. That's not surprising. The catchers, number one, they have the best feel for the zone. they have the closest view, but also, you know, they don't have as much of the emotion invested in it as a pitcher. Because what's the pitcher's number? 46%. There's only been 13.

So there's been overall 542 challenges. Only 13 of them have been by pitchers. And that's by design. I think there's a lot of teams that have kind of told the pitchers like, hey, let's leave this up to the catchers. Yeah, and I have the worst percentage. I think this is going to be a constantly evolving thing of the strategy that teams employ. What situations do we want to be more likely to challenge? We saw a play in the Astros Red Sox series where the nine hitter for the Red Sox challenged an O-O pitch with like two outs and nobody on early in the game.

And he was wrong. And it was like, why would you, why, that is totally not worth it. That is not changing the likelihood of the team scoring. That is not changing anything. So I think players are still being a little bit reactive to it. You can see them kind of get caught off by, oh, I didn't like that pitch. Oh, why better challenge? I think they're going to have a better idea going into at-bats and going into pitches ahead of time of, hey, if this is borderline, this is a situation where I do want to challenge.

And like all other things, they're going to get really good at it. I'd be curious to see also if it's easier, you know, easier, you know, wide of the zone, outside, inside, low, high, I'm sure there's a higher percentage. And also they're going to get scouting reports on umpires that say, hey, this umpire who's behind the play today, he tends to miss a way to right-handed hitters often. So that is the spot that if you're if you're iffy on one in that location,

go ahead and pull the trigger and challenge it because that's where he misses. And baseball has always been the game within the game. like more of the game within the game within the game within the game. It's just one more thing that if you're better than the other team, it gives you a better chance to win. So they're going to be doing everything they can to get good at it. Very, very interesting stuff. But yeah, pitchers have only had 13 attempts at challenges.

Six overturned, seven confirmed. Catchers at 60% batters at an even 50% right now. We'll see how that goes along. But the batters have already gotten better. I think first weekend there were like 43%. It'll be interesting to see how much that grows. All right, time for a quick break here on the Matt Thomas show with Ross. You guys want to get in.

You can. 7.13. 2.12.790 is the phone number 713. 2125-790. How are we feeling about the starting pitching with Hunter Brown down? I'm going to ask Brian Bogus-Evick what he saw from Lance McCuller's Jr. Yesterday in his follow-up start to the stellar start, his first of the season. Not so good yesterday in Sacramento.

We'll talk about that and much more. Here on the Matt Thomas Show with Ross. 713-21-2-5-7-90. Continuing until 2 o'clock, the Matt Thomas show with Ross without Matt Thomas. Brian Bogusevick hanging out. We had Dan Matthews in earlier. Appreciate Brian with us until 1 o'clock.

You guys have some Astro stuff you want to talk about. We've got a lot going on. 7-13-212-5-790 is your phone number. 7-13-212-5-7-90. Lance McCuller Jr., very efficient in his first outing. Of course, the seven innings of one-run ball. It was awesome. It was a great moment. It was like the throw the

throwback. Altuve was hitting bombs. Correa was making place. It was the good old days again at Dyken Park. Not so hot yesterday, but got into a little bit of trouble. And I would say it wasn't as horrible maybe as an outing to me as

the final line shows. No, I don't think it was at all. I think, you know, the stuff was pretty much just as good as it was in the first outing. It was more the command that wasn't quite as good. His fastball was taken off on him a little bit early. And he got himself into a little bit of trouble in the first inning

that he was able to work around. So that was great. But it started to run the pitch count up and just kind of set the tone for an outing that was going to be a little bit shorter. And, you know, his final line, you know, suffered because of that ball in the sun out there in center field. But all in all, he pitched okay. You know, if those are the games where you don't really have it,

but you can keep the team in it for four or five innings, that's fine, as long as there's more games that are like the first one that we saw, which was as good as we've seen McCullors in years. Yeah, this has been an interesting case with him because, I mean, one of the bigger question marks coming into the season was what you were going to get from Lance McCullers Jr. Because, I mean, we heard, again, in spring training when he was talking and he did that long interview, it sounded like he was basically retiring.

He was like, yeah, you know, whatever happened. I got a beautiful family and I've been very blessed and like, okay, sounds like this guy's got one foot out the door. But didn't that first start, man, that was incredible. And we've always known, Lance McCuller's Jr., sometimes the body has failed him, sometimes the control and other stuff has failed him, but he's always had the heart. Absolutely. I mean, there aren't many guys who would be in that situation fighting back from injury for three years, four years, when they could just kind of sit on it and cash it in. But, you know, guys know when they get out on the mound what they're working with and what kind of weapons they have at their disposal. And one of the things that really stuck out to me after his first outing when he looked so good was basically that he's finally comfortable with the weapons that he has to work with.

And, you know, it's all fine and good to tell somebody, hey, you need to go out there and attack the strikes on it. You need to throw more strikes. but if you don't trust the fact that your stuff that you can throw in the strike zone is going to get Major League hitters out, it's a difficult thing to do. And hearing him talk about the shapes of his pitches and the velocity and the movement on his fastball that he finally feels like he has the tools to go out there and pitch the way that they've asked him to pitch this year, that is very encouraging. And you still saw a lot of those same things in that outing yesterday, just not quite the control that he had. but I think he's pitching to contact better in these two outings than he has in years. And his ability to, you know, stay innings and at bats and not have these big disaster blow up innings when just lets things snowball on him is big. And I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that he's fine throwing a sink or a cutter in the zone and getting himself a ground ball and living with whatever the results of that are.

Yeah. And the Astros are going to need him. Not necessarily to fill the shoes, obviously, of Hunter Brown who's gone down. But, I mean, you just have to do it in the, what was the money ball? We have to do it in the aggregate. Like, everybody's got to step up a little bit because you're not replacing Hunter Brown. You need a bunch of guys to be incrementally and marginally better. And really, the biggest thing for the starting rotation as a whole now, and regardless of Hunter being hurt or not, needs to happen quickly, is keeping things.

on schedule and not having these short starts where the bullpens get. We're now 10 games in and kind of been upside down in the bullpen twice now. And the first time got bailed out in a hurry because of McCullers' first start and then it was backed up by Hunter's second start there against Boston. But they're in that situation again now

without Hunter Brown being the guy to come in and give you a good long start. So I mean what do we expect to happen? It's Cody Bolton for the Astros tonight at 740? That's short term, right? That's the guy who, number one, he was lined up to throw because he pitched on Hunter's day

the last time he threw. He threw 50 pitches and hasn't thrown since. So he stretched out a little bit. It is his day. He can go out there and hopefully Bolton and some long reliever, whether that be a Ryan Weiss or that be a move that gets made and they bring up somebody from Sugarland. If you can get five, maybe six out of those two guys combined today,

number one, you'll be in position to hopefully win a game, but also be in position to come out of this tomorrow, you know, with some guys left with some pitches in them. Yeah, it would be an interesting situation. How have we? We talked about Brian Abraeu and how he just hasn't looked great, but the rest of your, the rest of the bullpen in your mind. and Ryan Wise, he's been pretty good.

Kai Wei Tang's been interesting. I think shown some pretty good stuff. Just to kind of the state of the bullpen in your opinion. Well, the bullpen always starts with the ninth inning. And if the ninth inning isn't settled, it's always difficult. So that's the biggest concern right now is getting Brian a Bray right. And I don't think there are concerns that he won't get right. The question is how quickly does it happen?

And what do you do? What do you need to do in the meantime? But Brian King has looked very good. I think the biggest thing that I've noticed is it's early in the season, so you still need to have some coverage for long guys. And you've had some short starts, so that's kind of exacerbated that a little bit. But you have A.J. Blubaw, who a couple of his outings have been 40-plus pitches. Tang got seven outs in his last outing.

We've seen Ryan Weiss have these multi-inning outings. At some point, that's got to settle down. a little bit. Maybe you have one guy who's a long reliever, but you need to get settled into more regular roles. And you can't really judge a relief pitcher on what he is when, you know, AJ Blueball, as that outing yesterday went on and on, it was obvious that he was wearing down a little bit, but you just needed to get some length out of him because you had to cover inning. So until you can really see these guys in one-inning appearances and more of settled roles, It's still TBD, but there's a lot of guys with intriguing stuff.

Yeah, I think Blue Ball is, he's an interesting case because he looked great out of the bullpen, maybe not extremely sharp yesterday. But in theory, of course, if a guy is pitching so well and has the track record of being a starter, and maybe you need some starting pitching, I wonder how much they would want to put him there or just keep him in his role where he has been successful coming out of the bullpen. Yeah, it's enticing. to think, hey, Blue Ball has shown he's shown such an uptick in his stuff.

Could we get that for five or six innings? And the question is, would it stick? Right? After 30, 40 pitches, it's still going to be the same, or is he better suited to go out there and kind of empty the tank for an inning? And that's an enticing thing too, because he's been up to 99 this year.

he's shown a wipeout slider. He's shown that he could be a back end of the bullpen option, especially right now when you need a couple of those. Yes, you do. So, you know, I think there's more, I think there are more options to fill a starting role versus options to fill a back of the bullpen role, which I think Bluebaugh can do for now.

Yeah, yeah. It'll just be very interesting to see how it plays out and how much that fluctuates. It can even take, I mean, take years for all that to bear out when it comes to guys who are going to be starting, on a starting roll or a bullpen roll. 713, 212.5-790. The phone number, Willie, in Friendswood.

What's going on, Willie? Hi. Hey. Happy belated Easter to y'all. And to you as well. Thank you. I want to talk about Diaz, our catcher. Now, Vasquez and the day before, he had a super game.

And I think he's a super catcher, a backup. Yesterday, D.S. was up to the plate six times, and he was out six times. Is that bad? Well, when you got two of those innings with bases loaded and he's third out, it is bad. Okay. And the last inning, they had bases loaded. I don't know why they just didn't substitute and put Best Quetz in the way he was hitting yesterday. I just, I think D.S. is getting pampered.

He don't want feelings hurt. And you can tell when he's batting, he's squinching his eyes. Like he can't see the ball. Really? You think he needs corrective eye surgery? Well, I don't know. Maybe he needs contact or something. I don't know if they're allowed to play with contact.

Yeah, they are. Some of these people are playing with glasses. You know, it's no big deal. Right. Not too many. But I just, he looks like he's squinching like you can't. And then the first base is loaded. His swing was just reaching for the ball.

He barely tapped it like he really wasn't invested in hitting the ball. And he could have taken another pitch. So that's my thing today. You hope y'all disagree with me. You're going to defend him. No, well, he hasn't been great, Willie. It's okay. Go ahead.

All right. That's about all I had to say. We watched the Rockets game last night. And I am so glad they pulled it off. Thank you, Willie. My gosh. All right, bye. All right.

Well, I thought she was wrapping it up. And then she, I'm sorry, Willie. I'm not trying to be rude. Anyways, I know you're happy Arizona lost. That's another story for another time. Anywho, no, okay, Yiner Diaz. Look, first of all, Christian Vasquez is not going to be the everyday catcher for the Astros, folks. I mean, look at his numbers for the past couple years.

Has it been nice? A little lightning in a bottle from Christian Vasquez. It's been great. But what's wrong with Yiner? Come on. What's gone wrong with Yiner? Yiner early this season has been the issue throughout his career. It's pitch selection and being overaggressive.

When he has been more selective, he's gotten hits, I mean, the question, why is he in the lineup yesterday after Vasquez got three hits the day before? Yiner also got three hits in that game. He was in that game, too, and he looked really good. You know, he gets real jumpy. He gets, he hits in the same style as his. Jose Altuve. When he's struggling and he's trying to find it and he's searching for it, his default is swing. In case of emergency, just swing and see what happens.

And the more he lets the ball travel, the more he backs the ball up, the more you see him going to right field, the better. And there were signs of that. That's why he was in the lineup as the DH on Saturday is because Friday night, his last that bat, he shot a ball down the right field line and it was the swing that they'd been looking for. So you kind of press your luck on that and you give him the start the next day and he goes out and gets three hits. You know, yesterday we saw 0 for 6 more of what we've seen. But until he controls the strike zone better, it's going to be these wild swings of production

of hot and cold because when you're swinging at that many pitches and that many pitches out of the zone, it's just not going to be consistent. Yeah, he's just been, I always say he's been like a streak shooter in basketball. Like he's a guy who's going to go like one for 11 one game and the next game he's going to be hot. And last year, unfortunately, the scales tipped a little bit too much to not hot. He can go on some really hot streaks. He can hit some really good pitchers pitches where a guy throws a slider in the other batters box and he can put the barrel on it and, you know, driving a run in a situation. But, you know, there's going to be a lot of times.

And pitchers know now. They know exactly what he is and exactly how they want to pitch him. And it doesn't change from game to game. It doesn't change from series to series when you're facing different teams. Everybody is out there trying to prey on him being overaggressive and trying to get him to chase. And you know what? He knows and he's been trying to work on it. But when you see it being employed by other guys in the lineup and you see what it's doing with Jose Altovae.

And when you see, you know, other guys in the lineup being super selective and getting better pitches to hit and reaping the results, maybe that can be, you know, kind of the change agent for him. But until that happens, it's just going to be hot and cold. Yeah, it's just interesting to me that, like you said, he knows it, everyone knows it. He's going to swing at everything. And he's just like, I'm just going to still swing it everything. You know, you can think about a lot of things and you can work on a lot of things and you can have a plan. And then you stand in a batters box and somebody's throwing a hundred and a 90 mile an hour slider. And you just do what you've always.

done. And for him, it's swing. Everybody's, the Mike Tyson quote, everybody's got a plan until they get punched in the face. Everybody wants to be selective till it's 100. Yeah. You blink. Maybe he does need that corrective eye surgery. You can't just see. Maybe Willie's

onto something. He's squinting his eyes. I know guys who've tried it. All right. We're going to take a quick break here on the bad time of show with Ross. Brian Bucketabing is hanging out. You guys want to talk some Astros baseball. You can't. And let's do it.

713. 212 5790 is the phone number. They will be in action tonight against Colorado Rockies. 740 first pitch here on Sports Talk 790. It'll be a 630 Astros on deck with, I believe, Adam Wexler. So make sure you stay tuned for that.

713, 212, 570. The Matt Thomas Show with Ross with you until 2 o'clock. Matt Thomas show with Ross continues. Without Matt Thomas, out traveling with the Rockets. He will miss today. He will be back tomorrow. In the meantime, we had Dan Matthews hanging out for a little bit. Appreciate him.

Brian Bogusevic has been hanging out as well with S-C-H-N. 7-1-3-21-2-5-790 is your phone number if you want to get in. 7-1-3-21-25-7-90. Yeah, I was kind of finding myself worried about the catcher situation. I feel like one of the underreported or under-talk, because we talked so much about, you know, E-M-I coming over in Burroughs. and all these other guys. The catcher situation,

it's like Iner-Diaz, he had that foot sprain in spring training, and then Christian Vasquez, honestly, wasn't inspiring a whole lot of confidence, but early returns on Christian Vasquez, pretty good as well as far as that. I mean, the whole offense is hitting, and Christian Vasquez is hitting as well. And, you know, the reason you go out and get a Christian Vasquez

is because it's more of a known quantity than having a guy that hasn't played much. And Christian Vasquez, first of all, he's familiar with the organization, familiar with a lot of the guys individually and just how things work here. But also, he knows himself as a player. He knows himself as a hitter. So, you know, if he's getting in there every fourth day, every fifth day,

whatever it is, he's got a plan for how he's going to maximize his at-bats. It's a lot of, you know, trying to hit the ball the other way, just, you know, getting base hits to right field. He's not out there trying to hit home runs or doing things that he's not capable of doing. So you get a veteran who's a little bit more comfortable who can give you, quality A-B, and it works every couple days. But

the upside of Yiner getting it going and Yiner being the hitter that he can be, that would be a huge addition to the offense. I mean, that is a legitimate middle of the bat, middle of the order bat, if it's right. That's why you give him all these

app. Yes, and if you were looking for the updated Astros Christian rankings, I'm going Walker 1, Vasquez 2. Roa's bumped up, I think, over Javier now after this weekend. Now, these are week-to-week rankings, Brian. It's a deep roster. Right now I got Roa over Javier, and that's your top

four for the Christian rankings for the Houston Astros. It's understandable. Any disagreements there? No disagreements, but the number one spot right now is so much higher than all of the other spots. Well, we need Javier out of fourth place. What's going on with Christian Javier? You know,

he just, he looks out of sync. He looks like a guy who hasn't pitched competitive innings in a long time. And coming off of an injury like that, pitchers coming back from Tommy John surgery, we're always so health-obsessed. Is the guy healthy? What's his velocity like? You forget that they've got mechanical things that they have to work on and they've got, they haven't been on a game mound in a long time. And I know he got a little bit of time last year, but it just, it looks out of sync. When he's, when he's missing the way, he's missing, which is the fastball taking off armside on him.

When he's pulling fastballs, when he's not behind his fastball having it play through the zone, he's off. And his upper half and his lower half are out of sync, which is creating inconsistent release points and the ball just not doing what he's expecting it to do. And it just does not look like he is right mechanic. He looks like he's right from a health standpoint. He doesn't look like he's right mechanical. Yeah, I sometimes look at some of the pitching stuff numbers and things like that.

I mean, just from what I've read, like the sweeper's been good. The fastball, the movement of the fastball, because he's got that rise ball. It stays at the top of the zone. Guys are swinging up at the top of zone and they swing under it. So he's still got that. He's just not locating it. Right. And that's what is encouraging or gives you hope for it moving forward because the breaking ball shape looks good.

His change-up is actually the best that it's ever been. It's a really good pitch for him right now, and at times in years past, he hasn't even really used it. He's got a little bit of a two-seamer that he'll try to run in, but he pitches so much off of his fastball until his fastball gets right. And you're talking about just the tiny little difference between the ball coming off of the tips of your fingers and just a little bit off the side of your fingers. That is the difference between his fastball being right and going to the top. of the zone or his fastball leaking arm's side into a right-handed hit or in getting hit. So you're saying baseball is hard. Baseball is very hard.

And baseball, the difference between good and bad is almost imperceptible. Millimetres. Almost imperceptible at times. It's insane. So hopefully he can get right because they're going to need him, as we said, with Hunter Brown down. I would like to see more, of course, from Javier McCullors I'm feeling okay about. And Tatsui, my start was very encouraging over the weekend. Absolutely. That looked more like the guy that we were expecting to see, the more like the guy that we saw late in spring training.

He made a noticeable effort to subtract a little bit of velocity to get better fastball command. He was in the zone way more. He was under 50% strike percentage in his first outing. He was up over 60% in his second outing. So much more in the zone. And we got to see how the pitches play off of each other when they're consistently in the zone. he's locating his fastball and then working the slider off of it, which his slider is essentially three different pitches.

And, you know, sometimes guys breaking balls do different things just because they mess up and back a slider up. He was doing it on purpose. He was giving different looks on his slider, two specific hitters based on the matchup and, you know, breaking it into righties at times, breaking it in on a lefties foot, he dropped it straight down.

So he's got some weapons to go. out there and attack. Yeah, it's going to be interesting. It's going to be fun. How many buttons are on a pitchcom? Feels like he needs maybe a couple extra. He's going to, yeah, three different slider buttons for him. But, no, it's nice to see the quick adjustments because there's a lot of stuff, not just start to start mechanical things of, I need to throw more strikes. I mean, he's adjusting to new mounds in different slopes of mounds.

He's different, he's adjusting to a new baseball. He's, you know, working with catchers that have never worked with him before. So he's got a lot. And to see that much of a jump from start one to start two is really encouraging. Because he and Mike Burroughs, you know, they're not going to be Hunter Brown, but they have the best chance to form a really solid one-two top of the rotation. Hey, we can go out there and give you back-to-back out on days where we can really eat up some innings. Yeah.

And he also mentioned after his first start. there were nerves. I mean, first game in America, at home. Like Sacramento, a little less pressure. It's a little bit more laid back. And as to be expected. Yeah, absolutely. If you look at his,

Emi's numbers from when he was in Japan, early in his career, he walked a lot of guys. And then he knocked that walk rate down year after year after year after year to where he had really good command by the time he was coming over. So to see a guy really not command, commanding the strike zone who has a good good command of it typically it shows you that there was something you know nerves adrenaline either or um that looked a little bit more settled yeah it's some i i i think i'm very guilty of this is the the the human element of these guys being

human beings and expecting everyone you know you see the numbers and the velocities and the spin rates and expect that to just spit out on the mound but you're dealing with a human being well absolutely and adrenaline adrenaline adrenaline can be the worst thing for for a pitcher it's You think, oh, it's going to be good. You're going to get all amped up and your 96 is going to be 98 and you're just going to be blowing guys away. Typically what adrenaline does is it throws everything off and you're overthrowing your fastball and you're throwing through the break of your off-speed pitches. So settle in a little bit, get on a regular routine, regular rest and hopefully we see more of what we saw this last outing. That would be beautiful and much needed.

All right, quick break. Quick break here on the Matt Thomas show with Ross. Brian Bogus Evick with us for. one more segment. Those of you on hold, we'll get to you in the next segment as well. Also, some phone line opens for you. Phones lines open for you, folks. It's 713212-5-790. 7-13-212-5-7-90.

A couple more minutes here with Brian Bogusevick, who has been gracious enough to hang out with us. As he will also be on SCHN's coverage, this Colorado Rockies series. Rocky Mountain High, 741.1. pitch tonight here on Sports Talk 790 and of course SCHN tomorrow's 740 as well and it'll be a 210 start on Wednesday so we'll have a little bit of a short and show we'll go to on deck mode 1 p.m. there on Wednesday phone lines open 713-213-2-790 is the phone number

we'll get the news at noon at 1 with John and this is the latest we've ever done the news at noon Jonathan we'll do that at 1 o'clock you ready for that I'm ready seems like you're ready. He's very confident. He'll bring this coming up at 1 o'clock, 2 o'clock. We'll go into the A team with Adam and Adam. But bogey's still hanging out with us. We're talking some Astros baseball

and a couple of all on the phones. Gary in Galveston, what's up? Not too much. I hope you're having a nice evening or afternoon. I'm having a nice afternoon. I hope the Astros have a nice evening. Yeah, it depends on the pitching staff. Pigeons being killed

For the last couple years, people have been putting Brown and McCutton and them up there as the starters. When I grew up, starters were like Norah Rine, Clements, Johnson. Those went at least eight to seven, yeah, Randy, went seven innings. You cannot, Brown has not went to a seventh inning since he started. And McCutton, I don't think he's went one time, I believe. He threw eight innings last year In a complete game last year Hunter Brown did

And I think you threw seven innings like six or seven times I thought he didn't I heard on another radio channel He didn't He had not started He's been a night About 55 eight Five innings

No see Maybe not this year You're talking about this year Or forever in his career Gary See first of all Your first was thinking To another radio channel Gary you got to stay here on 790

I got this more than one radar channel. Okay. And then another thing, my time frame, we did squeeze, butt, and stuff like that. I don't think the players nowadays can do that. Squeeze butt? I don't think they know how to do a double squeeze. Yeah. A double steel.

Or a double steel? It's not 1972 anymore, Gary. Nah, this was in the 80s, dude. Oh, okay. I'm sorry. It's not 1882 either. The point being is, we've got. on away from that.

Yeah. From being that way. And I don't think that's how baseball was made to be playing. Yeah. And I just hit the ball and stuff. Right. But anyhow, that's about, and then, he went up six, up that six times. He couldn't get one hit.

Why did they not pull him in the fifth, when he went up the fifth time and the base was loaded, pull him and put somebody in his place? They were hoping he was going to get a hit. Yeah, they were hoping he was going to get a hit. Thank you. Appreciate it. A lot of good points made by Gary. You want to see more squeezed months?

No, I don't. I want to see less bunting. I don't think your issue is with baseball. I think your issue is with math, because the math is what has told everybody not to push pitchers past pitch limits and times through the order. Hunter Brown, by the way, went five or more innings in 30 of 31 starts last year.

Seven or more in five stars. Wow, that's pretty good. But yeah, it is. But it is, baseball is significantly different than it was a generation or two ago. Pitchers are used differently. A lot of that has to do with what the numbers and the math tell you. A lot of that has to do with how good relievers are now versus, you know, back in the day when you had four starters and a bunch of guys that weren't good enough to be starters. Now, I mean, we just saw an A's team who their pitching staff isn't even good and everybody that came out of the bullpen through 100.

So there's just a lot of options down there and matchups to play. And it's not going back. It is not going back to guys throwing 300 innings and four-man rotations. My favorite was I laid it out for a guy. It was one of the late season post games last year. And I said to them, all 30 teams have analytics departments. All 30 teams have multiple, multiple two to people. Let's just round a number.

Like they're all spending maybe a million dollars a year on the analytics department. It's more than that, obviously. I said, so $30 million a year collectively spent by baseball, they're all wrong and you're right. They need to butt more. He said yes. Well, you know what? If you're going to dig in, you might as well dig in all the way.

I was like, you know what? All right. At least you're confident about it. You know, there is the argument to be met. Obviously, situational. It's situationally in certain times, in certain games, you know, if it's a playoff game where, yes, you might need to lay down a bunt and guys are not as experience in bunting as they used to be because it's just not as beneficial.

So, yes, it shows up in a big way when teams try to do it because you're absolutely right, don't necessarily know how to do it anymore. At least on the whole, there are a handful of guys who can handle the bat. And the reason for that is because over the long haul, over the course of a season, over a guy's career, it is more beneficial to try to hit a homer.

You only get 27 outs. Don't give them away. Try to hit homers and doubles. By the way, Roderie Munoz is from Chandler-Rome on outright waivers. Munoz, the Rule 5 pick. Seven earned runs and three appearances with the Astros. If he clears

waivers, he must first be offered back to the Cincinnati Reds who he was picked from in the Rule 5 draft. That's not overly surprising. He's not looked good to start the season. It's a shame because he looked really good in spring training but the stuff was not the same. The breaking ball did not have the same shape.

The fast ball did not have the same zip on it, but all these numbers are horrible. I guess they just saw something and said, hey, let's try this with him. In spring training, he was throwing 97 and could locate his breaking ball and that was good. And he was getting a lot of guys out. it's not been anything closer to start the season. And you know what?

If the pitching staff was intact and a lot of guys were throwing well and everything was on schedule, you might have been able to give them a little bit more of a leash to try to figure it back out. But with things the way it are and you need fresh arms and you need production, it's not surprising. That's a shame. All right. Well, there you go. Roderé Munoz is out of the Astros. Well, that's two hours gone by.

It was very quick. Brian, appreciate the time. appreciate you having me all right brian bogussevick hanging out with us he is he's got very busy man he's got things to do so he is going to be on s c h in for the astro 741 pitch tonight here on sports talk 790 and sce hn appreciate him i'll be flying solo in the next hour you on hold will get to you as well we also have the news at noon at one o'clock coming up next hour number four of the matt thomas show with ross this is the matt thomas show with ross Thomas show with Ross without Matt Thomas. Ross v. Rayal with you. Thanks to Brian Bogussev for hanging out for a couple of hours. Really appreciate him. Some awesome stuff on the Astros as per usual.

Thanks to Dan Matthews hanging out as well, flying solo for this hour. So you guys want to get in and get on the phones you can. 713-212-790 is the phone number. Corley, we'll see you get to you in just a second. 713-212-5-790 but in the meantime we have to bring the news of the day it's normally the news at noon but we were hanging out with bogey so jonathan allen what's the news at noon at one all right let's start it off with the local let's go to the bay area where rockets closing out versus golden state 116 115 golden state with a one point lane and jabari's going to inbound the basketball to shangoon top of the ark hands it to katie katie gives it back to Alpi, left-hand lay up around the ribbon in for two. And the Rockets regain the lead at 117, 116.

All right, there you go. Nice. That was, I really liked that play called by Ime Adoko. Some have called the worst coach in the history of time. He needs to get fired. He's terrible. Because he wants to start this guy and that guy. He's the offense, blah, blah.

Anyways, nice play. Shingoon. Top of the key. Durant getting running downhill. Back to Shungoon. Two points there. Rockets get the win. You had Steph Curry throwing up. It wasn't really a prayer. I have that clip to the stuff. Okay. You do have it. Yeah, I have it. I have it. Okay. You want to hear that? Yes. They're not going to call time out. Six seconds left. Step at midcourt. Guarded by Jabari. Deep three straight away. Up, off left. Shot up, Nuga. Beck should not count. And the rockets are going to survive this. step curry tried a 30 foot shot the putback was up and in but i think it's well late beautiful call matt thank you mat beautiful call matt uh yeah the shot was not good there at the end i swear i was like all right step curry this shot's going to go in right he's been torturing houston for way too long rockets get up in that game they come storming back do the golden state warriors then they score the final bucket to hold them off it was a thriller

Golden State. Most importantly, Rockets improved the 59 and 29 on the year as they are a game behind the Denver Nuggets in the four spot. Three games ahead of the Timberwolves. Six game win streak, babe. Nuggets are on an eight game win streak. Rockets also one game behind the Lakers, but the Lakers do hold the tie break. Gut feeling feels like Nuggets three. Oh man, can you imagine Nuggets? Nuggets, Spurs, second round. All the Western Conference matchups are sexy. Rockets could be facing the Lakers. We'll see four games remaining in this season.

What the heck's going on with this 10 o'clock start, NBC slash Peacock? Dude, it's pissing me off. Because I got to do pregame, and I've got to watch the game. It's going to be fun though. I'm not doing post game. A little hoop action. I mean, I'm going to be up. I'm normally pretty much a night out anyways.

But yeah, Rockets have the 10 p.m. start in Phoenix. Then they'll come home for Philly, Minnesota, and Memphis to round out the season. Four games remaining, and they are one game behind the Nuggets and the Lakers, and they do not have the tiebreaker with either of those teams. Yeah, and I got our star, Katie, just talking about the game and just being excited about this W. I mean, we had the game in control, and they put them 30 in the game, and he got them back in two or so easily, you know, he makes shots so quickly. here. It looks incredible out there a couple months off and that was a tough one.

But it's late in the season and both teams are looking to get ready for the play all. So it was a good test for us and glad we came out with the W. I'm loving the energy from this rocket. Yeah, the vibes are better now, right? Look, I'm not going to get too optimistic.

But I'm just, I'm a little more positive. Okay, good. I'm optimistic as well. I don't know. It's feeling like, you know, I'm going from one week to first round exit and maybe now second round exit. Let's be honest, if they get in the four,

Saughters five spot, they win the series against the Lakers, and they go up against the Thunder. The Thunder are going to be big favorites in that series, and rightfully so. Right. So I guess we'll see what happens,

but right now, rockets in the five spot in the West. If the season ended today, which it does not, they would be taking on the Denver Nuggets, heading on the road to Denver. That would be tough, but we'll see what happens

and how that shakes out. What else is happening of the news at noon, Jonathan. Of course, if you guys were listening, we had awesome Brian Bogosovic breakdown. What happened with the local nine losing 12 to 2 to the A's in the 10th inning. This is what a spotter had to say after

the game. Follow you up bats. We battle, you know. We used a lot of resources there to get through that game. That was tough to end that way. But I give the guys to fight, you know.

We just got to turn the page get ready for tomorrow. And with Hunter Brown being placed on a 15-day injury list due to his right shoulder strain. I don't know, Ross, but it seems, and I'm not going to put this in the air. Oh, but you are. Go ahead. This is kind of what happened last year with Alvarez. Correct me if I'm wrong.

What do you mean? You got getting hurt? I hurt really early in the season. He's looking good. Early and often. So hopefully this is not how it is for Hunter. Hey, well, we'll see. It's a pitching injury.

and unfortunately the Astros are prepared for those. That's why they sign so many guys. That's why they have so many starting pitchers. So Arrogate is going to come up. I mean, you've got some options. Ryan Weiss can start. Blue Ball will see. Jason Alexander.

Who else is? I'm sure there's even some guys that I'm missing who are her candidates to potentially start games for the Astros. So we see it happens, but your ace goes down with a shoulder injury in April. It's not good. It's not good.

Can't even be positive about that. You can't even twist it. No, I can't. I really can't twist it. You've got some backup option, so that's good. But when your ace goes down this early in the season with a shoulder strain, hopefully it's not too much time that he's going to be missing. Because Hunter Brown is your ace.

And your starting pitching has been wobbly to start the season. Bullpen has been wobbly as well. Thank goodness the offense has been the best in baseball in terms of OPS, and I believe runs scored per game. And that's going to continue tonight in Colorado, hopefully. for the Astros as well. It's going to continue. Okay, there.

Oh, I'm sorry. We're going to be manifesting it. All right, what else, Jonathan? You know, we don't break out the WNBA news as much, but Andrew Reese gets traded from Chicago Sky to Atlanta Dream. Oh, wow. Two first round draft picks in 2027 and 28. Not much to say about that.

Angel Reese's a new face of the league. Hopefully, shit shines over there. That's all I got from there. Oh, okay. Obviously, if you missed the NCAA tournament, Usulae kind of dominates. Hey, come on, man. Why are you bringing that out?

They kind of dominated Don Stanley's. Don Staley, yes. Don Staley, yes. I was kind of disappointed. I wanted her to win. I wanted that. Especially what happened with the U-Conn's head coach. Chino Ariama. I was hate

watching. They got beef. You're hate watching women's basketball? Did that happen? Come on, man. I was like, no. U.S. has got to win. They got to take it down. They did not. UCLA. I'm sad that the Longhorns lost to UCLA. That was a close one. Yeah, but that girl was like 7, 6, 7 on the UCLA team.

Forgive me, I don't know. Yeah. And that's all I got. Of course, you got watch out for. We got one more, actually. Did you see this? No, what's going on? North Carolina has hired a coach. Uh-oh. One of the all-time blue bloods in college basketball hiring Mike Malone.

Of course, he won a championship with the Nuggets Since has been fired by Denver And I think fired by Phoenix I was like, that name sounds familiar As well Yeah, I mean, he's a championship winning coach You know, I mean, at the end of the day You're like, oh, I call a college coach playing the pros

Or a pro coach in the college ranks, well That kind of sucks, no They're kind of pros right now anyways North Carolina is a herited job Well, of course, but I'm just saying like He came from the pinnacle of professional. No, I'm thinking of Frank Vogel was with Phoenix. So, no, Mike Malone got

Letko by the Nuggets and hadn't been anywhere else, but previously he was with the Sacramento Kings got Leco quickly there. Well, we'll see. Good luck to him. I mean, UNC has not been the limelight for the Blue Bulls. Yeah, UNC Tar Heels. Beautiful campus, by the way. Oh, really?

Beautiful. Oh, I think I know where you're going with this. What? I see what you're saying. I got you. just kidding. Let's see. I'm trying to see the last time they made the final four. 2002. Last time they won it all was 2017. Six championships for UNC basketball. I want you tell Michael Jordan, you know, he's all locked in on NASCAR and all this stuff.

He needs to start dropping some checks for UNC basketball as well. Well, they're all dripped out in Jordan, though. Jordan brand the whole campus, right? That's true, but yeah. Maybe he needs a pony up for the roster as well. Mike Malone says cut a million for cut a check for 10 million. It'll be all right. All right. There you go. That is the news at noon here on Sports Talk 790 time for a quick break. You guys want to get in.

You can phone lines open. Everyone on hold. We will get to you, I promise. 713-212-5-790 is the phone number. 7-13-212-5-7-90. The Matt Thomas show with Ross with you until 2 o'clock here on Sports Talk 790. That is mostly correct. Matt Thomas out today.

out with you. Phone lines open. 713. 2.12.5.790. 713. 2.1.2.5.790. You can also send tweets at Sports RV. And you know what? I would appreciate a follow on my Instagram at SportsRV as well. I will follow you back. I've been trying to post more stuff on there. I know I've been saying that and I really haven't been doing it. But I've been sick, man. You know what, Jonathan, I'm feeling better because this flu A that every, I had the flu A.

And apparently it's been kicking everyone's ass. I heard about multiple family members and some other people have heard of the coworkers so I don't feel as bad. I thought I was like 78 years old because I got knocked down by the flu, but apparently flu A has been a particularly bad strain. Just blame that woman off in the airport that was coughing

all over you. I don't hope for her to be dead or anything, but if you're a hack, get a hacking cough on a plane, wear a mask. That's all I'm saying. All right, Corley's been waiting way too long. Appreciate the page.

patience, Corley. What's up? Hey, how are you guys doing? Doing great. What's going on? I just wanted to talk about the bullpen with y'all. Get your take. You know, obviously, still way early to, you know, start real complaining. But I don't like what I'm seeing so far. And I'm wondering if maybe you think Dana Brown could have done a better job

putting together, you know, some guys that can actually get us out of innings. You know, we just have this series with the A's and you see these guys who I have no idea they are. They're throwing 100 miles per hour, 101 miles per hour, and we got guys here that, you know, they can't even find the strike zone, and they're giving up five, six runs a game. So I just, I wanted to know what you got to thought about the situation. Yeah, it's not great. Now, first of all, I mean, when you start with Josh Hader's injury, it's not going to be exactly the way that you wanted things to pan out, of course, as he's trying to get back. Brian Abray, you were supposed to be a great secondary option, and he's been terrible, unfortunately.

from there, I mean, I don't hate the options that you've had. Blue Ball's been good out of the bullpen. Ryan Weiss has been pretty decent as well. Kai Wei Ting is somebody you brought over from, or I mean, a Taiwanese pitcher who's been solid. I mean, then you mix in a stray, Brian King. I feel like you've had like four, five, six options of guys out of the bullpen. It just, the results haven't been exactly what you've wanted right now for sure. But I don't feel like it's a poorly built bullpen as of right now corley all right yeah i mean i kind of agree with you you know it's uh on paper it should be right right but there's some sort of disconnect it turns out they don't play the games on paper unfortunately

it turns out these guys are not made of diamonds they do not play it on paper yeah anyway thank you so much for getting me i just wanted to talk about that for a little bit no yeah i totally appreciate you getting in thank you very much but yeah i mean Blue Ball was a little bit. I mean, he's been empty in the tank. He's been out there. Overall, the stuff has been good from Blue Ball. Just the results haven't been exactly what you've wanted.

Brian King's only given up one run in five outing. Five outings. So overall, he's been pretty solid. Josh Hater's been out. Brian of Brayu's got to be better. I mean, I was a guy. I was stumping for Brian and Brayu. I was like, hey, don't worry about it.

You got Brian Abrae. you backup plan. I'm not going to say a disaster because he's only gone out there four times, but he's giving up a run every time he's gone out there, right? I'm pretty sure. I have to pull up the game locks. Even when he got that save, he gave up a home run.

What was it, to like Roman Anthony or something like that, when he first came out there. Then he struck out the side, and he was hitting, like, touching 97, and you're like, all right, maybe he's going to be a little bit better. He finally got a save out of the way. But it just hasn't been ideal.

Yeah, runs given up by Brian Abrae all four times he's gone out there. ERA of 23.63. That is not good. But hopefully they can hold water because the usage has been high right now. And you're not getting as much out of the starting pitching. And that's kind of already baked in. First couple of weeks of the season, you're not going to be wanting to throw guys out there for 100 plus innings.

Hunter Brown did throw. 100-press pitches, I should say. Hunter Brown did throw 100 pitches in the first start, and then they tried to relimit a little bit in his last time out, and then he got a shoulder injury. It's just such an inexact science.

It's just so difficult to figure out what guys can do and what they can't. And we had the caller earlier when Brian Bogussevick was on last hour. I was like, yeah, well, back of my day, Nolan Ryan and Roger Clemens and Randy Johnson and all those guys, yeah, they were throwing more innings. They certainly were.

Those guys don't unfortunately grow on trees. And now you have guys out there making millions and millions and millions of dollars. So they want to preserve their arms. You don't want to have a guy out there running his arm into the ground and just having long-term usage issues and or injuries. So it's a difficult, delicate line for the teams to tow. Yeah, Hunter Brown wants to be out there. happens. Well, then he got hurt last year. Hey, you're paying Josh Hader all this money.

He's the closer. He wants to be out there. You're getting a lot of four out, six out saves and six outings. Then he hurts his shoulder. And I mean, it's also a situation where guys like Nolan Ryan are the exception rather than the rule. If we go and look at like all time innings pitched, I mean, unless you're going with like the guys like Cy Young way back in the day when those guys were pitching every three days. they weren't throwing 101 miles an hour with maximum spin. They just weren't doing that and just emptying the tank every time they went out there. And it's unfortunately been just the way that everything is

because there's such a high emphasis on spin rate, high emphasis on velocity. You have a lot of guys especially who have been pitching for so long and not only have they been maxing out the velocity when they get up to the major league, they've been doing it ever since they were very young. And in high school or middle school or whatever,

everybody gets out the radar gun and everybody wants to see what's going. Everyone gets on the track man and max everything out. And yeah, Nolan Ryan, I'm just pulling up like innings pitched all time. He's fifth, all time. How about Phil Necro? Fourth. It's Cy Young, Pud Galvin, Walter Johnson, Phil Necro, and Nolan Ryan.

Why can't everybody be like Nolan Ryan? because there's only one Nolan Ryan. Yeah, you're talking about all-time grates with all-time arms and longevity and stamina. And this, yeah, not everybody's, the Astros aren't going to stock their starting rotation with five Nolan Ryans. Because there's only one Nolan Ryan.

And he's retired a long time ago. So, yeah, we can bring up all these names from way back in the day and stuff, it's just a different game. It's different usages and all that type of stuff. And some dudes were just absolute freaks of nature. Nolan Ryan was absolute freak of nature. Again, 990s, silly, he was like 45.

Dude was a freak. And that's why we love Nolan Ryan. Owen Ryan wouldn't be so special if there were five Nolan Ryans on every starting pitching staff. It's just not realistic. 713-212-5-790 is the phone number you want to get in. 7-13, 2-1-2-5-7-90. Gary What's up, Gary?

Hey, good morning, guys. Hear me okay? Yeah. Or good afternoon, I should say, yeah. Hey, listen, I'm having a brain fart here on, and it's in baseball and football, but I'm calling on the baseball. Coming out of spring training, one side, the pitchers has the advantage over the batting, and it takes them about a month to catch up or vice versa,

and the same on football. Can you tell me what point comes out? In general, the defense holds the advantage in football and the pitching holds the advantage in baseball. But it's been a little bit different, especially with the ABS. And I think strike zone getting a little squeezed, and there's been walks across the board. The walk rate has been higher across the board.

I think the scoring has been up as well, Gary. So this year we might be bucking the trend a little bit. Yeah, it seems that way. And I think that ABS does have it. They all make adjustments and everything. but that's okay. I would rather the batting be ahead of the pitching right now because of last year. So anyway, I just couldn't remember which was which.

So thanks for the insight. Thank you, Gary. Appreciate it. Yeah, especially in football because you have, I mean, it's another thing we're talking about, not exposing guys to injuries with pitcher usage and not throwing and not a bunch of Nolan Ryan's laying around. It's they want to preserve their players. They want to preserve their quarterback.

So what does that mean? they have guys who the starting players don't play some of them if it's Sean McVeigh or some other coaches they don't play a single snap in preseason. They don't want to get them hurt. They don't want them healthy and ready to go for a long season. It's the nature of the game. Guys are bigger, stronger, faster than they ever have. Injuries are up everywhere because everybody's year-round pitchers as well. So yeah, your tendons and ligaments aren't necessarily.

built to hold these muscles that everybody can build in this high usage and this violent usage. That's how things snap. Think of a rubber band. You just pull on it. It's going to be fine. You start keeping ground and stretch it out. It's going to snap eventually. That's just the nature of everything getting pushed further and further and further to the limit across all sports. I don't know what the solution is. You can't put a governor on people. You know, you can't say like an engine can only go over 70 miles an hour. or you can't say, hey, guys, you can only try over 80%. That's not going to work. So I don't know exactly what the solution is.

But obviously, it is a problem. All right, we're going to take a quick break here on the Matt Thomas show with Ross without Matt Thomas. Those are you on hold, I promise we will get to you guys want to get in. I'm following solo for a couple of segments. So you've got some time to grab the floor and hold it for a couple of minutes if you'd like to get in on the phone. [phone], the phone number, 7-13. 212.5.790. 132 p.m.

here on Sports Talk 790. Rosvier, we are with you? Phone lines open at 713. 212-5-790 if you'd like to get in. 7-1-3-1-2-5-7-90. You have the Astros losing two out of three to the A's over the weekend. Hunter Brown, if you're not heard,

has hit the IL with a right shoulder strain. certainly something to monitor as we go along as it was supposed to be his turn in the rotation today it will be Connie Cody Bolton getting the start as he was it was on his he's basically on schedule to start

so he's going to get to start we'll see what happens with a piggyback type of situation but bullpen has certainly been interesting as far as the usage in the arms and we had the caller in the last segment saying hey, what's going on with the way this was constructed? Of course, your first part of the construct, well, first two parts, let's say. You would want Josh Hader to be healthy and effective,

and you want to Brian Abrae you to be healthy and effective. And neither, you have neither of those things. I mean, Brian DeBreu is healthy as far as we know, even though the velocity has been down, touching 95, 96 with his fastball yesterday before giving up the three-run shot to Brent Rooker that was the walk-off for the A's. and he's just not been effective.

He's giving up runs every single time he's been out there. So hurry back Josh Hater, which I was hoping to not have to say, hoping that Brian Abraeu could be able to hold it down. And you've just had a lot of usage and not getting a whole lot of length out of your starters. And that's probably not going to happen again today. And then we'll see in Colorado, it can always be a tenuous situation. And there has been no announced starters for the Astros. after that.

I know Spencer Erigetti threw on Friday for the space cowboys. So it could be a situation where he comes up and let's see, that would be three, just three days rest. So it would be maybe until Wednesday where he could slot

into the rotation for the Astros. So we'll see what happens there. I believe that would be Christian Javier's turn. So TBD, especially with the bullpen and we'll see how things go. Hopefully Astros can get some solid innings out of Cody Bolton, some efficient

innings, knock in some runs, make everything easy, easy, because the offense has been carrying the day for the squad, to be sure. 7-13-212-5-790 is the phone number if you want to get in, 7-13-212-5-7-90. We've also been talking about the Rockets last

night. Late night on NBC slash Peacock, if you stayed up for Golden State Warriors versus the Rockets as Steph Curry was hot towards the end. I thought it was going to be a typical. Steph Curry crushes the rockets and they were all sad and we cry.

And I'm just sick of this guy. He's been haunting us for too long. It's the greatest shooter to ever walk the planet. Thankfully, you had the second greatest shooter to ever walk the planet, in my opinion, on your side last night. He had 31 points. Steph Curry, five of ten from three, 29 points off the bench.

He was coming up huge at the end there. He was, man, he was doing everything. He was like playing all the hits. We had a Steph Curry bingo card from him last night of things that annoy me. He's chewing on his mouthpiece. He's begging for fouls that aren't there. He's shimmying on everyone. And, oh, by the way, he's knocking down threes where he's falling away from everyone.

I'm sick of Steph Curry, Jonathan. I've had enough. Chewing on his mouthpiece, though? Yeah, you haven't seen him do that? I know. It's weird. All right, just put, you know where your mouthpiece supposed to go in your mouth? Nobody wants to see you chewing and getting saliva everywhere, all right?

Okay. I mean, it's fine. Whatever. Do you know they have, like, people were tracking what he shot from the free throw line while he had his mouthpiece in and what he shot? I think he had like a higher percentage when he was chewing his mouthpiece. He's in his own. He's, you know, relaxing. Yeah, I guess so.

I don't know. That's so funny. It's just some kind of weird fixation, but whatever. Look, okay, mostly the number one thing is the three-pointers that he just knocks down. And they're always coming around like five curses. and stuff like that. He's actually very good still finishing at the basket. That's one of the things that people forget when they talk about Steph Curry

all the time as an offensive weapon. We fixate on the shooting, but he'd been very good great dribble driver, basically his entire career, finishing tough layups in traffic over like multiple people high off the glass with English, all that type of stuff. I mean, really could do it all

and still doing it all for the Golden State Warriors who at least lost last night, but at least the rockets were able to get the win with that last second shot. I like that from Udocha, the set that they had, like I said, you get Kevin Durant on a runway,

then you have to shore up for him. You're figuring he's going to stop and pop. Alpern Shingoon ends up open and finishes over Christop's Porzengis. Alperin Shingoon was doing a number on Christops last night, by the way. That was fun to watch. I think he's kind of overrated. Porzingis? Well,

this is the thing. You're a little too young for this. When Christop's Porzengis first, came out. Do you know what they called him? His nickname? The unicorn. Because he was 7 foot 3. When he was like New York Knicks, Christopps Porzingus, and he was young, before he had

like five injuries to his legs. Horrible knee injury he had? He had like bad knee injuries. He was I mean, yeah, it wasn't great. They were calling him the unicorn. He was knocking down threes. He was doing everything. He had 7 foot three. He's got a long wingspan.

He was balling early in his career. And then his his legs, he's just had a bunch of injuries basically throughout his career. I'm pulling up like his game logs. Like games played, it's like 50, 43, 30, 65. Like, yeah, he hasn't, he played 72 games his rookie season. He never played more than that the rest of his career.

Which is going to keep an eye out with Victor Wimbonyama. I'm just saying. But they are treating him with kid gloves trying to limit his minutes and stuff like that when it comes to Wimby. And then he'll probably be unleashed in the playoffs. And then we'll see from there. But, yeah, early career, like Christops, he was on track to be like a 25-7 guy. He was shooting almost his third season, almost 40% from three.

But it's just been leg injury after leg injury. And he can hardly move. I don't know. I mean, he's only 30 years old. Is that true? It moves like he's 35. Yeah, so back in the day, he was actually pretty good. And they were calling him the unicorn, Jonathan.

him but now he's he's not anything close to where he once was so another question like another question so look is out yeah austin reeves out austin reeves out austin reeves out who say say the rockets do slip up and get to the number three or not slip up legged slip up and denver slips up and rockets take number three seed i don't think it's going to happen but go ahead I guess my question to you is who would you rather play because you always say like everybody is tough well actually in your hearts of hearts

who would you want to the first If Luca and Reeves aren't playing You would want the Lakers That means we got to stay 50 you know I would say right Well in theory The Timberwolves are going to be the six Timberwolves are three games back of the rockets

And There's four games left you'd basically they need to beat the rockets head to head of course to win the season tiebreaker rockets would have to go one and three while the timber will oh no they would rockets have to go oh and four right they went one and three and they went i don't know um but it doesn't look likely looks like t wolves are locked into the the six i don't think the rockets are getting the three you know what i should pull up the the odds it's probably going to be but if you're the what if you're the nuggets would you rather

That's an old segment from our good friends, Indy Kalu and Greg Cook. If you're the Nuggets, would you rather have home court against the Rockets or Lakers and stay in the four or go up to the three and have to take on the Timberwolves in the first round? That's what I'm saying. Because the Timberwolves are going to be tougher, but you'd also, you'd rather avoid the thunder for as long as possible. But it's not like the San Antonio Spurs or anything to sneeze at. If you're the Nuggets, would you rather stay at the four to avoid? You'd probably try to maybe stay there and get the Rockets or the Lakers over the wolves and then the spur. What's more difficult?

Wolves spurs or Rockets Thunder? Rockets? You know, that's actually a really good question. Just play the games. They're just going to play the games. That's it. It's way too much. You can't figure out what the hell's going on.

That's what we had EMA DOC on last week. We'll get them on this week as well. Play the games, win the games. We'll see what happens. Best laid plans. Careful what you wish for. I would rather avoid the nuggets of everyone left for sure. But we'll see how it plays out.

As of right now, it would be round one. Nuggets versus the Rockets in Denver. Denver would be favored in that series. Just saying. But we'll see how it plays out. A lot of shuffling can still happen. But it's looking like, of course, Thunder and Spurs are locked in one, two.

Timberwolves lock. into six. Don't think the suns are going to get them all the way of three games back. Rockets aren't going to lose out, so they'll be fine. And they're either going to be three, four, five. So are these must win games for the rockets? Must win games. Stop.

They're very important games. No. This is my, I will always give you the answer. See, my definition is very simple. Can the rockets be eliminated? If the answer is no, it's not a must-win game. Thank you for playing. All right, we're going to take a quick break here on the Matt Thomas show with Ross.

Whatever. Jonathan, you know what? All right, you know, I'm not going to tell you, shut your bum ass up. But Jonathan, whatever, I'm going to be nice. All right, coming back, we'll talk some more Rockets. We'll ask shows if you guys want to get in as well. Phone lines still open. No, believe it or not today with Matt Thomas out. 713-212-5-7-90.

Final segment of the Matt Thomas show with Ross. without Matt Thomas Ross Vera out with you Jonathan Allen as well Matt is out traveling with the Houston Rockets he will be back tomorrow

as it is a late 10 p.m. start against the Phoenix Suns is Jalen Green? Is it Jalen Green revenge time tomorrow? Are you working? Adam Klan has trickled in here. Are you working the Rockets Radio Network tomorrow? No, I'm not working a game

that starts at 10 o'clock central. Well, I mean, do they just don't care about people in the eastern coast? They don't care about their product. The Wex doesn't care either, so it's fine. Well, I'm not doing the post game, so it's fine. There's no post game. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. It's fine.

No one's doing it. No one is. No one will be. All right, anyways, we've been talking a lot of good stuff here. Thanks to Dan Matthews for hanging out in the first hour. Thanks to Brian Bogusevich for hanging out a couple of hours as well. here on the program. Rockets, we just, honestly, my head

is spinning with all these scenarios of what can happen in terms of the Western Conference. There are three games up on the Timberwolves, one game behind the Nuggets and the Lakers. They could still finish three, four, or five. I would say ideally, no matter what, if you're the Rockets, the three

is still preferable. Because I think they would be underdogs in a series against Victor Wimbunyama in the San Antonio Spurs. I've heard Adam Clinton is a huge fan of those guys. And the Timberwolves would, you want to get the Lakers

in the first round. I get that. But at all costs, I feel like the Thunder are still the boogeyman, and I want to avoid them as much as possible, but the San Antonio Spurs aren't as much different. Spurs are going to win 60 games. Rockets have only won 60 games

in their history once. It was the 65 win 2018 squad. So I'm a little bit scared about that. but we'll see. Chips fall where they may. I wonder, because this is what I know was going to happen. The rockets are going to be out probably, I would say, if I had to guess in the second round. First round, if they play the Nuggets, I think. And then everybody's going to be mad. Everybody's going to be on their fire you doka train.

And the rockets are the worst. And Raphael Stone is a bad GM because he sat on his hands. And we're just going to point down to the same things, though. Like they just didn't have a lot of wiggle room. We can argue about should Raphael Stone have gone all in and pushed all his chips? in with the Kevin Durant trade. But once that happened, once the trade was made and the roster was constructed the way that it was, this was the hand that they were going to be playing. And unfortunately, not a single second on the floor from Fred Van Vleet is a big negative.

Then Stephen Adams goes down. And then nobody expected Dorian Finney Smith to be as bad as he was. And then Tari Isson was sleepwalking for basically a month and a half. So things have not gone according to Plunk. they are rounding into form they have won six games in a row Reed Shepherd has been much improved and we'll see what happens

but I just don't think as a bottom line where you were chasing the Oklahoma City Thunder you're still far behind them and then you got surpassed by the San Antonio Spurs so there's going to be a lot up in the air in terms of what happens even on the floor and then off the floor with this rocket squad in the next

in the next couple of weeks and hopefully the next couple of months. Doesn't feel like, of course, they're a championship contender, but they're going to play as best they can and we're going to see what happens. Because the move for Kevin Durant was the right move.

I felt like at the time, and he's been your best player this entire year. He's leading and scoring. He's been pretty good defensively. He's not a lockdown guy, but he's not locking down guys on the perimeter, and he never was that guy. He was pretty good.

good recovery, good block shots. He was the rim protector on those Hampton 5's lineups. Hampton's five lineups that the Golden State Warriors had back in the day. And he's been your best player at 37 years old. And most consistent as well. The good news is Alperin Shingoon has been rounding in a form. Tari Easton has been playing a little bit better as well. And maybe you can do something.

Maybe you can make some noise. Because that's what this team was built for. They weren't built for June. I'm sorry. they were hopefully built for June. They weren't built for October and November and December. They were built to be in the playoffs. That's what you needed.

That's what was lacking when Jalen Green was let go. And he was just a shadow of himself in the playoffs. And the Golden State Warriors could completely take him out of a game. You said you needed a closer. You said you needed somebody who can go and be transcendent and be special. And oftentimes that's what happens in the playoffs. That's what happens in the NBA, especially. where, you know, talk about championships and greatness and all that stuff.

A lot of times it's like some dude was incredible. Some guy was insane. Like Michael Jordan was just better than everyone else and dropping 40 points a game in the finals. There was no like coaching genius that went into that. There was no, oh, what's the secret sauce to this or that? You can have the stray game from a role player where he goes off for 30 and stuff like that. But you need your heavy hitters to just be better. than the other guys and be all-time great,

especially in bad moments when everyone's shooting poorly and you got your backs against the wall and you're in a seven-game series. You need to pull one out. Somebody's just got to go nuts. Somebody's got to go crazy. And Kevin Durant has that capability. More than anyone else in the Rockets and about as much as many in NBA history,

although he does not have the championship count or the playoff success than a lot of others do. But that's what we're going to see. because that's why Kevin Duran was here. He wasn't here for the 82 game season. Jalen Green was great. He played all 82. He led you in scoring last year.

Well, Kevin Durant's played a lot of games this year, and he's led you in scoring as well and been much more efficient, and damn near had a 50, 40, 90 season. Let's see, 75 games played by Kevin Duran. I would have bet the under on that to start the season. Because we even asked him when we were interviewing, I'm like, hey, is there going to be any kind of minutes restriction?

Are you off back to back? He's like, nope. Plan is to be out there, all 82. Well, what's not going to be all 82? But if he plays the last four games, he's going to hit seven. I'm sorry, is there? Yeah, four games left. That'll be 79 games played for Kevin Durant,

which he has not done since 2014. So that would be insane. So hopefully he's out there. We'll see where the chips fall in terms of the rockets and the playoffs. All right, that is going to do it. for the Matt Thomas show with Ross here on Sports Talk 790 without Matt Thomas. Thanks to, let's see, Dan Matthews for hanging out for a little bit. I appreciate him.

Thanks to Brian Bogusevich for hanging out. I appreciate him as well. Thanks to all of you who called, tweeted, got involved in the show. I appreciate you well as well. And oh, thanks to Jonathan Allen. Hanging out for four hours, bringing us the news at noon, all that good stuff. Appreciate Jonathan Allen. All right. That's going to do it for our program.

Coming up next. It's not only one Adam. It's two Adams. They call themselves the A team. And they're next. Don't go anywhere here on Sports Talk 790.