Breggs' Back, Brevin's Down & El Reptil Is On The Loose!

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Two lifelong Houston sports guys named Adam Raised.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
My Earl.

Speaker 3 (00:11):
Nolan Hockey.

Speaker 1 (00:15):
Voulted by the magnificent roller coaster ride.

Speaker 3 (00:19):
That is Houston sports.

Speaker 1 (00:24):
Chill lage down for the only homegrown afternoon team is
talking Your Teams? Adam Clinton and Adam Wexler are the
A teams.

Speaker 4 (00:36):
A what is up Houston, Texas?

Speaker 5 (00:59):
It is?

Speaker 6 (01:00):
He was a Monday edition of the A Team Sports
Talk seven ninety wex Ac and of course Cole Thompson
with you until six o'clock tonight and then the nostalgia
and the good times takeover yet again. What a fantastic
weekend that the Astros had in New York City, specifically

(01:20):
in the Bronx. Now, it wasn't all great because they
should have won Saturday's game. And as I'm gonna try
and put this eloquently lightly, however, I was texting with
somebody I think it was after the lost Saturday was
just like the Yankees are absolutely atrocious and they were

(01:42):
not exactly bullish on the next days at that point
starting pitcher, but it ended up being Jason Alexander. I
think Colton Gordon might have been like an option to
pitch Sunday's game at one point, but it became Jason Alexander,
and for the second straight time, he looked fantastic. I
mean yeah, like a no hitter going into the sixth inning,
but his pitch count was going to be too high anyway.

(02:04):
The Astros taking two out of three kind of like
I said on Friday, wex it's not the same vibe
I guess around this series as it has been in
seasons past. I just think the majority of that ninety
percent of is the Yankees suck this year. They really do.
Like they're just not a good baseball team. And the
only drama of the weekend to me is that the

(02:27):
stupid Mariners refuse to lose ever again. But I'm not nervous,
like the show that precedes us for example, not nervous
at all. I think the Astros are gonna be fine,
especially as they continue to get healthy and in that
Vein Christian Javier going tonight, that is a site for
sore eyes, at least until he pitches like Spencer Araghedty
in his return, and then we can start getting upset

(02:47):
about that too.

Speaker 7 (02:48):
Well, he's already done that most of his minor league
rehab starts to look like that. If that's how you
want me to open up things.

Speaker 8 (02:53):
Here, Wow, that's a web blanket.

Speaker 7 (02:56):
There are a lot of good things to be excited about.
Football season is also a ry Texans practicing right now
back in Houston. They obviously took care of their preseason
initial preseason game. Two more to go, both of which
will likely look a lot like the game they played
on Saturday, considering they have joint practices in front of
each of those coming up this Thursday here in town.
Bryce Young will bring his team to the practice fields

(03:18):
at the Texans training facility. They'll work out together on Thursday.
They'll do the same thing a week from then with
Jared Goff's team in Detroit in advance of their game
against the Lions. Then they'll be ready for the season.
We'll see if anything changes on the injury front. Might
have some more information on CJ. Gardner Johnson got some
more information on Saturday, as expected from Demico Ryans after

(03:39):
their game against the Vikings. We'll share with you those details.
Some more bits and pieces of the NBA schedule will
be sprinkled upon us tomorrow morning. Full schedule later this week,
and obviously there is plenty to talk about to get
things started with the team that still sits in first
place in their division, same distance ahead that they've been

(03:59):
our same time tracing them, that has been for quite
some time. The other team that was thinking maybe they
would chase them now much much further back.

Speaker 8 (04:07):
Rangers, much much further back.

Speaker 7 (04:08):
And the Mariners continue to play the best baseball in
the American League and that is why they are just
a half game back of Houston. Astros begin their series
with the Red Sox tonight. It is a return to
the Major League mound for Christian Javier for the first
time since May twenty first of twenty twenty four, and
hopefully he will be able to give them solid pitching.

(04:29):
I don't think he's pitching long for this game. And
you brought up a name that probably will impact the
Astros either today or tomorrow, and that's Colton Gordon because
Spencer Araghedty is expected to get the ball on Tuesday,
with Hunter Brown getting the ball in the finale of
this three game series. He'll be facing the Red Sox
for the second time in their two series, not very
far apart, but in the case of aragedy and Javier

(04:51):
pitching Colton Gordon. Very likely we'll see action in either
tonight's game or tomorrow night's game if he does not
pitch here still with the team, but no in their
current rotation. They gave that spot well earned. As you
mentioned to Jason Alexander, back to back starts of not
being scored on, that is pretty spectacular stuff. Six innings,

(05:11):
one hit yesterday, Astros did more than enough offensively by
the time the game was over, But midway through that
game it took a monster two run double with the
bases loaded from Cam Smith to put the game in
a little bit more of a comfortable zone. Brian o'braw
worked out of a real bad jam in the seventh
inning and proceeded to get five outs to bridge the

(05:32):
gap between the late innings into the ninth inning, and
by the time the bottom of the ninth inning rolled around,
the Astros had a six run lead. As predicted essentially
two weeks ago Friday, August first, to open up the month,
we were handling the Astros on deck duties. So Brian
McTaggart his weekly Friday visit to that show, and I
asked him, will Carlos Correa Homer in Boston or in

(05:55):
New York or both. He correctly said both. He homered
in Boston during that three game series, and obviously he
homered in yesterday's game. Brings a blazing hot bat into
his first game in an Astro's uniform. Go to dyk
and Park tonight, hitting well over four hundred has those
two home runs during his time, He's riding a five

(06:16):
game multi hit streak, and he's sitting in each of
the eight games since his first game with the Astros.
So an eight game hitting streak going into tonight clearly
can change how this offense looks. And again we'll wonder
when it might look even more potent if and when
Jake Myers returns and hits, if and when Jordan Alvarez
returns and hits, and then obviously brings you to tonight's starter.

(06:38):
It is awesome that it appears Christian Javier has had
major surgery followed by zero setbacks and is making his
return on a reasonable timeline. Following the surgery that he had,
He's pitched as a healthy pitcher throughout his minor league
rehab work. He has pitched as a pitcher who had
the same struggles late in his early, I guess in

(07:00):
twenty twenty four, but later in his major league career
that he showed during these rehab starts not a real
big fan of throwing strikes, and that's not a real
good way to go through major league starting pitching life.
So that is probably an utmost concern from a we
need wins standpoint, And I'm sure the people in the dugout,
the people in the stands, and everybody listening to us
today is still most focused on to be great of

(07:22):
Christian Javier and any of the other returning arms are
a huge part of the long.

Speaker 8 (07:26):
Term future of the Astros. But they need to win games.

Speaker 7 (07:30):
They need good pitching, they need good hitting, and they
need to outscore the other team on a daily basis
or else they'll find themselves in the heart of a
very very very competitive wild card race. They're in a
competitive race to land one of the two seeds that
gets you time off when the season ends, because they're
still just as close to Detroit as they've been for weeks.
Both of those teams have played around five hundred baseball

(07:51):
for about five six weeks now, and they would like
to at least be in that race and not be
in the race with the Red Sox and the Yankees
and the Rangers and the Guardians for the remaining spots
in the wildcard race. Great to make the postseason awful,
to make it as a wild card, and as long
as they keep Seattle behind them and the Rangers way
behind them would not be a concern.

Speaker 6 (08:12):
Well, do you think as we get closer and closer
to that three game set, the only one they have
left this year, and it will be here in Houston,
that that's going to basically determine the division?

Speaker 8 (08:24):
Well, I would say it this way.

Speaker 7 (08:25):
If the Astros take all three games from Seattle, they
will win the division for sure. If they take two
out of three from Seattle, I think it's going to
be very difficult for Seattle to win the division because
I think their Astros are going to keep pace with
them at the very least between now and then, and
then the flip side would be true. I think the Mariners,
that they come to Houston and the sweep that series,
they'll win, they'll win the division. Yeah, don't. I don't
hope for that. I don't expect that to happen. But

(08:47):
I also wasn't lying to you last week when I said,
the best team in the division is Seattle currently. They
are the best team in this division. They have the
best roster in this division as of today, and they
are playing like the best team in the division. It's
just the way, it's just the nature of where we
are in the season. You've built enough equity in your lead.
You've managed to win a lot of games with players
you never expected to contribute, and now they have put

(09:08):
together a roster at the last two trade deadlines that
actually cares, and that actually you know, three of their
best six hitters were acquired at the last two trade deadlines,
and they've gotten almost nothing for Ayo Henrio Suarez so far.
His ops is three point fifty seven, Carlos's is over
one thousand, and yet Josh Naylor has been so unbelievably
helpful to them in the additional time.

Speaker 8 (09:29):
Since he's been Josh Naylor.

Speaker 7 (09:31):
Uh, yeah, you can say that he's leading the majors
and stolen bases since he's gotten there. And he hit
another home run yesterday, and so did cal Raley. They're
hitting and pitching well enough to pretty much win every day.

Speaker 8 (09:41):
That's fine.

Speaker 6 (09:42):
Still fat hey, are you gonna say that when the
Astros are fully healthy though.

Speaker 8 (09:47):
Well, now, I don't know how any of those guys
are gonna play well.

Speaker 6 (09:49):
At the risk of insulting one of the heroes of
the weekend, which was Friday Night's bomb by Taylor Tremmel,
because he's the he's the guy I'm talking about here,
He's the last if you want to call it cowboy,
that's a regular, I guess, semi regular. You know, I
don't know what Jornan Alvarez, if he is even going
to be there, and then what he will be, and

(10:11):
I don't there's no guarantee that Jake Myers comes back
and is fantastic. I will say that Jeremy Paine has
been better than I thought he would be after a
long layoff.

Speaker 8 (10:19):
Yeah, his month.

Speaker 7 (10:20):
Eight more hits in the eight games that he's played,
and again one of those games was brief, and he
looks very very similar the way he hit the ball
when he let off the game with a homer that
looked very similar to what he had done prior to injury.
Four of those eight hits are extra base hits, all
things that he was doing prior to injury, and nothing
about the way he's fielded the way he's run the

(10:41):
bases looks like he is, you know, concerned about it
at all, and it's not an oblique although it's in
a similar area with the rib fracture, and it disappears
he's completely over it. I'm sure there were a bunch
of pockets of his season where in eight games he
had eight hits and hit two fifty and that's what
he's done. We wouldn't notice it of it as any
other time. But you're obviously segmenting since it's his return

(11:01):
from injury, which coincided with Carlos Korea and the two
other trades being made and added to the team. Yeah,
Taylor Tremmell has been very, very good all things considered.
You know, he has the same tendency most of the
other space Cowboys had when they were in the lineup,
just far too many extremely empty at bats, three pitches

(11:21):
back to the dugout, five pitches back to the dugout,
just just hit put the ball in play. He's struggled
with that a little bit, but he's also come up
with some huge hits.

Speaker 8 (11:29):
He's a big.

Speaker 7 (11:30):
Time plus defender and he's helped this team quite a bit.
But yes, there are two spots in the lineup that
will be dramatically different if Jake is back in center
field every day and Jordan is likely your every day
designated here.

Speaker 6 (11:42):
All right, we are going to have a ton of
Astro's conversation again today, as we should. We're going to
have the best of X. We're gonna have hopefully a
live peek in on the Carlos Korea media availability today.
A little less than an hour from now is when
he's scheduled to talk to the same piece people he
talked to for a number of years. But it'll be
interesting because and he had a very interesting quote heading

(12:06):
into tonight's homestand it's the first time obviously that he'll
be in an Astros uniform since the trade back here
and look at that, he'll be wearing a jersey that
he's never worn before, the City Connect Jerseys tonight. All
of that is a fair game. We will get a
or we will catch up with Steve Sparks. We will
have a lot to get to here. On a Monday
edition of The A Team, It's Sports Talk seven.

Speaker 1 (12:28):
Ninety the eighteen on Sports Talk seven ninety.

Speaker 6 (12:39):
It is the A Team Sports Talk seven ninety Monday
Edition coming off a very very interesting weekend in Houston sports.
I'm gonna be gonna be honest with you, Brian, that
smells like pure gasoline. I don't know why I started
to talk like Brian Fantana there.

Speaker 8 (12:55):
And Will Ferrell and Anchorman.

Speaker 5 (12:56):
No.

Speaker 6 (12:57):
I knew that it was going to be difficult if
it was a tight game between the Astros and Yankees
when the Texans preseason opener began, and it was, as
a matter of fact, right before kickoff, I feel like
the Astros were in the process of leaving like twenty
more runners on base.

Speaker 8 (13:16):
They did that all week and again that's what they knew.

Speaker 6 (13:17):
Now. I was just like, that was the sound of
me struggling to hit the back and forth button on
my remote control between these two games.

Speaker 8 (13:29):
It's it's amazing to me.

Speaker 6 (13:33):
It's just, in my opinion, what NFL preseason has become
in a very short time. I'm not saying it was
appointment viewing before, but I just it meant more. Guys,
it used to just mean more when you would watch
preseason games, even like ten years ago. Let alone, you
know the inaugural Texans seasons, like say you come back

(13:53):
for two thousand and three right, And I think we
talked about one of these games the other day, David
Carr Andre John like he was a rookie. They were
getting not meaningful minutes because it was a preseason game,
but there was more games on the schedule. If I
feel like you saw starters, more starters don't even play anymore.

Speaker 7 (14:12):
Far fewer joint practices then, and teams got smart and said, well,
so we could regulate exactly what we do. It can
call the plays we want, we can segment an aut practices.
We can say keep our quarterbacks from getting hit, and
we can do whatever we want. We can tell the
guys not to even tackle. They can literally dictate exactly
what they want. Just find the coach that wants to
practice the same way that you do, and it alleviates
the need to send guys out there and in the

(14:34):
game on Saturday. I'm not sure exactly what happened to
the most recently signed before today player for the Texans,
Marlon Davinson. I didn't notice any significant injury. He was
placed on injury reserve today. He was their ninetieth player.
He's running with the last of the last, but not
a great situation for him.

Speaker 8 (14:53):
That was so they could sign Jalen Mills today.

Speaker 7 (14:55):
Other than that, I don't think the Texans had any
injury of any consequence. Daryl Taylor had any injury early
in the game and had to leave the field, but
came back.

Speaker 8 (15:02):
It's more snaps later.

Speaker 7 (15:03):
There was a significant injury on the other side with
Jordan Addison, and that was very unfortunate, and you kind
of see that coming with the way that he went
down and obviously then when he stayed down and needed
to take the cart to get off the field. Clearly
there are a bunch of other injuries around the league.
There was an injury last night of consequence with the
Eagles offensive line during their at stadium practice. But from

(15:25):
that standpoint, teams have gotten as much as they can
put into Well, let's see what our team looks like
the day we start camp.

Speaker 8 (15:33):
Wow, everybody's healthy. How do we get to the opener
like that?

Speaker 7 (15:37):
That's really like the number one thing on everybody's board
inside every coach's meeting for six weeks, and that's all
the teams are trying to do. It's all the Texans
are trying to do, and they've managed to get pretty
far down the road with that not without two training
camp injuries and the latest with CJ. Gardner Johnson. A
Demiko Ryan's acknowledging after the game Saturday saying, you know,

(15:58):
a contrary to the early we will see CJ back
on the field with us this season. Didn't go into
details about what the actual injury was or a timeline
that goes with it. Mentioned he was in good spirits
and that yes, it's very good news that he will
be back on the field. They will do the same
thing this week, except now they have a joint practice,
so that is when the players who didn't play at

(16:18):
all in Saturday's game, that's when they're gonna get their work.
They'll do the same thing a week later. There was
no Daniel Hunter, there was no Will Anderson Junior. The
only starters defensively that might see the field as starters
in a month against the Rams maybe Tim Settle, maybe MJ.

Speaker 8 (16:32):
Stewart.

Speaker 7 (16:33):
Because of the injury to CJ. Gardner Johnson, that's it. Well,
the other nine guys that were out there are battling
for where their playing time will come from or quite
simply will they make the team. And it was similar
on offense, although you did see three rookies who will
be a big part of the Texans moving forward immediately
week one, because the longer Cam Robinson doesn't practice, the

(16:56):
likelier it becomes.

Speaker 6 (16:58):
CJ.

Speaker 7 (16:58):
Stroud will be protected by rookie tay Ersrie from the
left tackle position. He's been playing left tackle from the
moment Robinson went down with injury on the first day
they were at the Greenbrier last week. Been getting all
the reps there. He took what would be first team
reps because there were a couple of players that could

(17:18):
be starters for the Texans that actually did play on offense.

Speaker 8 (17:21):
He was one of them.

Speaker 7 (17:22):
And then when they felt okay, he's gotten his working,
he stepped to the side. Most of the rest of
the offensive line continued to get more work. They were
playing with their backup quarterback, though they were playing against
some of the front line players for the Vikings. Obviously,
Jayden Higgins and Jalen Noel got a lot of work
in this game also, and they will be counter on heavily.

Speaker 8 (17:41):
But the big story for me is those three.

Speaker 7 (17:44):
Initially, There's plenty of other things to get to but
off the top and guys that will contribute immediately. Nothing
wrong at all about the way that Erseri held his
own drove guys when they were running the football off
the line of scrimmage. They kept their backfield clean, you know.
Daria Goombaly was their number one, and he carried the
ball like a true running back in the first series
of the game where the Texans marched straight down the

(18:05):
field and scored a touchdown with Davis Mills at the
helm and Braxton Barrios catching the touchdown pass on a
really well designed play, well executed play, and great run
after the catch with force from Burials to get it
in the end zone. But Tari wasn't looking at defenders
in the backfield. He was getting the ball, he was
seeing a hole, he was where should I cut, He
was setting up blocks, and they had a very good

(18:27):
looking run game. Davis Mills, similarly, from a pass pro standpoint,
not really in jeopardy for the single series their backup
quarterback played in this game and essentially the single series
that Andrews and Tay Ursery played up front. After that,
everybody involved in what we would grade out as a
pass protection was with backup linemen and your third or

(18:48):
fourth string quarterback, So limited interest in analyzing that as
those players will not be on the field together for
the Texans ever.

Speaker 6 (18:56):
Right, And you said, like the analyzing part of it
is just that's why, that's why I made the noise
with the remote control, because it's not that I don't
want to see some of these guys for the first time,
but it's it's just so it's not inconsequential, but it is,
you know, like it's it's hard for me to even
put it into words. I just want I'm talking about
with preseason games being different now than they used to be.

Speaker 7 (19:16):
What's going to be consequential for the team, unfortunately, fortunate
for us and fortunate for the fans that will be
there on Thursday, the couple thousand of them. You'll see
the Texans second preseason game Thursday, starting at nine am.
It's not televised, it's not going to be rerun on
NFL Network five times, including currently, but that's where they're
going to get their work, and that's where CJ. Stroud's
going to throw all this preseason passes in my mind,

(19:39):
and the following week against the Lions, but I don't
I don't expect them to play on Saturday at the
home game.

Speaker 8 (19:43):
I don't expect to play Saturday in Detroit.

Speaker 7 (19:46):
Same thing for Nico Collins, same thing for you know,
most of the rest of the line, because they'll get
their work in on Thursday and everybody won't be able
to see it. A lot of people will, media will,
and obviously we'll give you everything we can. They are
inside today for practice, which is take place currently figured
with them scheduling a mid day practice. They actually changed
the time from their original schedule a couple weeks ago,

(20:08):
but nonetheless, a two pm practice pretty much indicated they're.

Speaker 8 (20:12):
Not practicing outside today.

Speaker 7 (20:14):
They're not putting their team outside on the practice fields
in the heat for their very first post West Virginia practice.
So yes, they're inside the bubble as we speak, getting ready.
But I will say that the way that they called
plays ran plays executed up front, Davis Mills running Nick
Cayley's offense, because that's what people have right now. How
did Nick Kyley's offense look with CJ. Stroup, I don't know,

(20:36):
because he was wearing number ten. It looked very capable
of being a lot different and a lot more.

Speaker 8 (20:45):
We're going to dictate to you.

Speaker 7 (20:47):
What's going to happen versus uh oh, what do we
do now, because they're dictating how these plays are going
to be run, they the other team's defense.

Speaker 8 (20:56):
Whoever.

Speaker 7 (20:56):
It was most of the second part of the season,
probably the last ten games or so. And again, just
a little taste of that individual's definitely worth analyzing. Starting
with Ursery, and I think that was an exceptionally good
start to what hopefully will be a long permanent member
of the tackle group moving forward. And again currently he
slate sentence to start at left tackle with no other

(21:18):
better option.

Speaker 8 (21:19):
Get four more urs reason, I'll fill a whole lot better.

Speaker 7 (21:21):
Yep, it's going to be a process. If you get
one a year, then you can obviously do the math
on how long that takes.

Speaker 8 (21:27):
You'd like to do it a little bit more quickly.

Speaker 7 (21:29):
You'd like to have more players in house, not always
from the first round, second round of the draft. Every
other team has done it. No reason you can't. Also,
they just simply have it. They have one offensive lineman
building block, and he's now played ten preseason snaps in
his NFL career.

Speaker 6 (21:46):
All Right, we will get into or back into, i
should say, a little bit of baseball conversation, especially when
we come back, because the best of X, well, at
least in part, prominently feature a very very interesting subplot
or storyline from over the weekend in Major League Baseball.

Speaker 8 (22:03):
That is straight ahead on a Monday edition to the show.

Speaker 1 (22:07):
The eighteen on Sports Talk seven ninety.

Speaker 9 (22:14):
Did you see this?

Speaker 10 (22:15):
We're putting out between five and fifteen posts a day.

Speaker 6 (22:18):
Four hundred people were arrested for things that they said
on social media. History repeats itself type, bang, you'll succeed.

Speaker 3 (22:27):
Never doubt that you're the one who puts for no
One building.

Speaker 8 (22:32):
You're the best of X. Nothing's gonna ever top You
know you're the best of X. Posting every single day.

Speaker 6 (22:41):
You know you're the best of X, breaking the entire internet.

Speaker 8 (22:52):
All right.

Speaker 6 (22:53):
A lot of things happened over the weekend, and one
of them was something we talked about heading into the weekend,
fact that the first female Major league umpire made her
debut over the weekend in Atlanta. It was the Marlins
and the Braves in this game. And her name is

(23:15):
is it Jim Paywell? I don't know how to say
your last name Powell? Okay, why didn't you just spell
it powl? Ask those who created her. It's not on her,
those who created her. Yeah, she wasn't made in a
lab or her husband. I don't know if she's married.

Speaker 8 (23:31):
All right, So.

Speaker 6 (23:36):
Look all the jokes that were gonna be made about
this kind of thing that are, you know what they are.
You can't miss the first call the way she did.

Speaker 8 (23:46):
You just can't do that just trying to fit in.
You can't. That is what she did. She did, you
know what?

Speaker 6 (23:53):
According to umpire auditor, she was thirteenth of fifteen umpires
on the day. Now again, her correct call rate was
ninety point three percent. She missed fourteen calls, getting different
people graded out. Somebody else says she missed eleven, so
at ninety three percent, which is again another example of
why we need a uniform, technologically powered way of doing this.

Speaker 8 (24:16):
But i'd digress.

Speaker 6 (24:19):
The first call was so bad, she wasn't like horrible
the rest of the way I guess relatively unremarkable is
how one site described it.

Speaker 8 (24:27):
But like, you can't, you can't do that, she just did. Okay,
let's go to the responses.

Speaker 6 (24:37):
Was she taught to stand behind the catcher and not
the plate, and this guy has her lined up right
behind the catcher when I don't know, I'd say, at
least two feet over would have been the middle of
the plate.

Speaker 8 (24:50):
Yeah, we had a.

Speaker 7 (24:50):
Call the other day where the announcers for the Orioles
were basically falling out of the booth saying, how can
you miss that?

Speaker 8 (24:56):
It was a call right over the heart of the plate.

Speaker 7 (24:57):
Adlee Ritchman had lined or had set up up well outside,
and so his glove basically came back to be right
in the middle of the plate. The umpire seemed to
be confused by that for where they were, and they
botched the call.

Speaker 8 (25:08):
And I think she might have similarly.

Speaker 7 (25:11):
I know the person who posted that is being mean,
but I actually think it's correct because if you look
at how her calls went, she missed the calls in
the exact same place all game long. Her plate was
too far off the plate in one direction. And then
because her plate was in that spot, all the calls
that otherwise were on the plate or on the edges

(25:32):
on the other side of the plate, well she missed
those for the same reason, because she just had the
plate in her mind in her setup, I think. And
there's four calls on each side, and so there's four
balls that should have been balls but were called strikes,
and there were four balls over there that were called
strikes what should have been balls. Similarly, it's just I
do think that maybe the next time, if there's a
next time, because remember she's a group of there's sixteen

(25:54):
other people that did exactly what she did or will
do over the course of the season. They fill in
the gaps when necessary, five game series necessitated it. That's
what they had this weekend, minor league umpires who have
earned the right to make the trip. She's spent as
much time in the minor leagues as any other umpires.
She's umpired games for the Astros in the past, in
the minor leagues or in the spring training, I should say,

(26:15):
And I don't know how many more games she got.

Speaker 8 (26:17):
Three.

Speaker 7 (26:18):
She did two games on Saturday because there was a
double header and she was working the bases then obviously
behind the plate. That's what most people with umpires in general,
because the calls at the bases are so easily fixed
because they go to replay on those when necessary.

Speaker 8 (26:34):
Only those three bases, not the most important one.

Speaker 7 (26:37):
Well, there's how many plays at first base, second base,
and third base need to be replayed over the course
of a two and a half hour game.

Speaker 6 (26:43):
How many strikes five need to be redone right, ninety
that's the difference.

Speaker 7 (26:49):
You need replay for the bases a couple times a
game or none. You know, maybe three four five if
you wanted to, You could probably review twenty to twenty
five calls being serious. Ninety is a little high, but
you know, twenty to thirty calls that are questionable that
I have a fraction of a slice of card stock
that can fit between the projected zone and where the

(27:10):
ball actually went. Borderline pitches on the black pitch. There's
so many of them over the course of the game.
Some umpires get more of them right, and some umpires
get more of them wrong, and we're gonna know who
they are. If she was a permanent umpire, we would
know where to place her one season into her career,
either on the top side, the bottom side, or thankfully,
you wouldn't even know she's there because she's a good umpire.

(27:33):
She's just just another umpire. But yeah, it was pretty
impactful to the people that are the loudest with the
tiniest voices on the X platform that want to say
it pretty much no matter what, she just unfortunately gave
him ammunition with the very first pitch. Pitch was inside,
wasn't even close. The batter didn't say anything, the umpire
or the home catcher didn't say anything. The first pitch

(27:55):
of the game, they sent it to the hall and
it was an incredibly bad call.

Speaker 8 (27:59):
That was my favorite part. You've got to get this ball.

Speaker 6 (28:01):
You've got to get this ball that was called three
feet off the plate for posterity sake. If I was
a delivery driver and I'm made ninety point three percent
of my deliveries accurately, I'd be fired by the next morning.
MLB is the only league that tolerates this level of
officiating inaccuracy.

Speaker 8 (28:19):
That's not true. The other two do it too. Yeah.

Speaker 7 (28:21):
Also just about I mean, I'm sure I don't like
to say things are the dumbest, but this does. That's
an awful, awful comparison. As per usual, Major League umpiring
calling balls and strikes akin to a delivery truck driver,
very very similar.

Speaker 8 (28:37):
Definitely compare those two.

Speaker 6 (28:39):
But you know it's funny, ninety percent plus sounds good
if you're taking a test, that's an.

Speaker 7 (28:45):
A Well, how about if you're taking a test and
before you're done with the question you have to answer it,
because that's like calling balls and strikes, which is going
ninety eight miles an hour, one hundred miles an hour,
one hundred and four miles an hour, and you're supposed
to know just by visualizing, Well, this is what I
believe the strike zone is, and I think that's where
it crossed the plate. And I'm standing four and a
half feet behind the home plate and there's a person

(29:05):
in front of me with a glove in my face.
Or you could just drive your truck through a couple
of green lights, park it in front of the store,
get your dolly out, unload your water bottles, and roll
on inside, and then get back on your way. Very similar.
That's a little bit different than filling out a scantron.
Do kids still use scantrons in school for tests? Well,
I mean they have computers at their desks, they usually

(29:27):
use those if they can.

Speaker 8 (29:30):
Every school has computers in every.

Speaker 7 (29:31):
School, I think a vast majority from a testing perspective,
if possible, like HISD does, I would imagine most of
the other school districts that are smaller and have contributions
being made to their learning can do so.

Speaker 8 (29:45):
Eric tweeted in and said, was her zone consistent?

Speaker 6 (29:48):
I think that's the main question when it comes to
questionable balls and strikes. If the zone is consistent, then
I don't have any problems with their calls. That's the
stupidest thing I've ever heard since the last guy.

Speaker 7 (29:59):
Yeah, the first part of that, it is it's a
it's a question people keep asking, and the answer to
it is yes, I just explained that her her zone.

Speaker 8 (30:08):
Was very consistent, consistently wrong. But it doesn't. Yeah, it's
it's not about that. It's not her zone. Why are
we asking the players to play a new game. Yes,
you played baseball yesterday, but today you're playing a different
game because the same home plate is there, Your feet
are going to be in the same place in the
batter's box, the guy is gonna be throwing the ball
from the same distance away. But we're gonna give you

(30:29):
a new strike zone today because we decided we need
to rotate through these people. It's that has got to
not do that.

Speaker 6 (30:35):
That is as simplistic yet accurate a way to explain
what drives me.

Speaker 8 (30:39):
Crazy about this as I've ever heard.

Speaker 7 (30:41):
Yeah, it's okay for the plate to move because Jose
Altuve and Aaron Judge are different sized humans. That's normal,
that's realistic. That's fine. And it's not a side to side,
it's vertical. The width of the plate right remains unchanged.
Their strike zones are identile in that regard.

Speaker 8 (31:01):
But it heck, my goodness, Jose the pitch he swung
at in yesterday's game.

Speaker 7 (31:05):
Oh my god, walked on that pitch.

Speaker 6 (31:09):
Yeah, well he he swung it some interesting again and
again and again and again.

Speaker 7 (31:16):
He gets he can he can pretty much do no wrong.
But yes, this was absolutely We knew this on Friday
when we brought it up, Thursday when when the news
and Wednesday earlier in the week. It was going to
be a big social media talking point and probably for
shows that spend time talking about baseball, the ones on
the MLB Network, not the ones on the Worldwide Leader,
because they don't. Uh, this was going to no matter

(31:37):
what she did, how she performed, it would be a
lot of chatter about it. And unfortunately the very first
thing that everybody got to see and how many other
pitches did people see on on social media that she
called in the game one who they saw this one
and was not a good call?

Speaker 6 (31:54):
Well, you were going to see the first one, regardless
because of the historical context, which makes it even worse
that it was called a strike. This is maybe the
worst response first call. Jitters, sure, but stepping into the
big leagues behind the plate is a pressure cooker. Most
of us couldn't even handle for one inning. Respect Shut up,
Shut up twice.

Speaker 8 (32:15):
When people try.

Speaker 6 (32:16):
This is the participation trophy culture that we're living in now.

Speaker 8 (32:19):
Oh, most of us couldn't even do.

Speaker 6 (32:20):
That, right, But if we did and we were giving
this opportunity, you can't screw up that first pitch, not
like this, not when it's like the biggest controversy in
this sport is this exact subject that.

Speaker 7 (32:34):
She almost has nothing to do with, but now she
does because she's one of them. Yeah, she missed the call,
and this is why we think it would be Although
the funny, the worst part is the thing that will
make you most angry you personally, is even with the
ABS challenge system, there's a zero percent chance that call
gets challenged. You're not challenging the first pitch of the game.

(32:55):
You don't even care if it's that egregious.

Speaker 6 (32:57):
Why not? Why would you?

Speaker 7 (32:59):
Because if unless the system is in place, that you
can just win them forever. If you keep winning, you
get you get them. Yeah, but that's that's why I
give these hitters. And I've done this for years. Like,
how can you guys take it? Like the amount of
times you should be getting thrown out, you should be
arguing balls and strikes. The fact that they tell managers
you're not allowed You're not allowed to argue balls and strikes.

(33:20):
They're allowed to make egregiously bad calls consistently throughout the game,
but you're not allowed to argue them. Aaron Boone, He
basically just said, you got to fix third inning of
yesterday's Astros Yankees game.

Speaker 8 (33:32):
It was coming. He didn't want to see that. He
wants to stick around.

Speaker 7 (33:34):
He didn't want to stick around for more. Jason Alexander Yeah,
and Moseelle Tuve and Carlos Kreda. The pitch that preceded
his ejection was a correctly called strike, but it was
a build up of well, your strike zone needs to
be the same for both teams.

Speaker 8 (33:48):
You got to get this right. You gotta get this fixed.

Speaker 7 (33:50):
And I don't know if his ejection led to him
fixing the strikes on the rest of the way. The
Yankees just didn't have any offense the rest of the day. Yes,
and it's so different than in the NBA.

Speaker 6 (34:03):
For example, a guy gets decked, it's a dirty, cheap
shot whatever. The refs don't see that, and then when
he inevitably responds, they throw that guy out, and it's
like replay has sort of kind of mitigated that, but
it goes back to the original. This is why we're
just insanely raging all well. I am raging all the

(34:25):
time about this stuff because it's so preventable.

Speaker 7 (34:28):
They clearly have the technology to do something about it,
and both sides, sadly, the player's side the ownership side,
are still a little bit reluctant to it.

Speaker 8 (34:39):
I do think we're going to see it next year.

Speaker 7 (34:41):
I do think it will be in place in some
format which won't be making everybody happy, because if we
have the technology to get them all right, why do
we not want to get them all right, even at
the expense of a little bit of extra time watching
a baseball game with more correct calls than ever. Astros
win two out of three. That's what I got out
of the weekend. The Braves Marlins series likely draws almost

(35:03):
zero national.

Speaker 8 (35:04):
Attention, if not for yesterday's game facts. All right, we
are going to come right back.

Speaker 6 (35:09):
We will get back into a very very important aspect
coming out of the Texans preseason opener as it pertains
to the regular season.

Speaker 8 (35:16):
We'll tell you about that next.

Speaker 3 (35:22):
The A Team on Sports Talk seven.

Speaker 11 (35:25):
Ninety Back here on the A Team rolling through the
first hour of the first show of the week, expect
to hear from Carlos Korea.

Speaker 7 (35:35):
In just a few minutes as he introduces himself once
again to the Houston media. He already knows the people
on his team, but he has only been in visiting
clubhouses so far. Will be back in the Astros clubhouse
today of making sure his City connecting uniform fits properly,
for him to exit the dugout to a roar from
the crowd, to take the field in the first inning
to field baseballs that have been hit by Boston Red

(35:57):
Sox off of pitches from Christian Javier.

Speaker 8 (36:00):
One of those could be from Alex Bragman.

Speaker 7 (36:02):
A whole lot of Hey, welcome backs for everybody enjoying
the game tonight, which you can catch right here on
Sports Talk seven ninet as soon as we wrap things up.
We'll have the on Deck show and then Astro launch
and then that first pitch. Also want to give everybody
out there a chance to say thank you in a
huge way because iHeartRadio has the Thank a Teacher program

(36:22):
going on right now. It's powered by donors Choose. And
I'm sure like many of you, especially as Ac and
I were just talking about back to school, because back
to school happened for many today in his house and
will happen for many of us over the coming days.
It'll be tomorrow in my house. We all had a
teacher who made a difference. Your chance to say thank
you is now. You can nominate an outstanding public school

(36:44):
teacher who's gone above and beyond for their students to
win five thousand dollars to stock their classroom with whatever
they need. And today the teacher of the day for
us here at iHeartRadio is Alexa Merlin.

Speaker 8 (36:57):
She teaches Atklin Oak High School.

Speaker 7 (36:59):
Folks have told us dedicated teacher, genuinely cares about her
students and their work and is willing to go the
extra mile to help them in any way. Awesome for
us to say thank you to her, and you could
do the same.

Speaker 8 (37:11):
You can nominate your favorite teacher.

Speaker 6 (37:12):
Yeah, we all remember that one teacher made a difference,
who believed in us, challenged us, or put up with
us in my case, or just made learning fun. I
remember miss Pike's first grade. Since you know, my little
guy just went into first grade this morning. So now's
your chance to say thank you in a big way
with Iheartradios Thank a Teacher powered by donors Choose.

Speaker 7 (37:32):
Yeah, you can nominate your favorite teacher right now at
iHeartRadio dot com slash teachers. Good luck to all of
you as you welcome back the bouncing bundles of joy
ages six through eighteen. Yes, they will be super duper
excited about five when they start HI some of them
those ages in those schools mentioned a few things that

(37:53):
are going on at Mini Made Park. There will be
as there was when Kyle Tucker and Ryan Presley returned
to Diykin Park this year, a little tribute. They will
do so with Alex Bregman in advance of tonight's game.
Then he'll go through, likely hitting in the first inning
and then out to his position shared by Carlos Carrea.
I wonder if Carlos will leave a message for Alex

(38:13):
and the dirt over at third base, Carlos's new position.
Remember these two kind of like Jeremy and Carlos are
also tied together on that side of the infield. Carlos
Correa making his way to the major leagues, playing shortstop
throughout his minor league career and beginning his career as
a shortstop right when they drafted college shortstop Alex Bregman,

(38:34):
who not long after made his quick path to the
majors and immediately became a third baseman. Carlos Correa stayed
at shortstop throughout his Astro's career, and Jeremy Payne was
ready to take over right at the time he was
now going to Carlos was going to play shortstop for
Minnesota some point in time. Going to third base was
at the forefront of Carlos's mind long before this trade

(38:55):
came through. Very easily could have been at third base
for Minnesota in the future, like starting in twenty twenty six. Instead,
he will start twenty twenty six as the Astros opening
day third baseman, and is there again tonight.

Speaker 6 (39:06):
It's wild that the perfect scenario came together for this,
Like I don't this was never a conversation with.

Speaker 8 (39:14):
You know, it's funny about it.

Speaker 6 (39:17):
Of all the guys that have left, and I'm talking
about position players that were stars in that lineup in
twenty seventeen and twenty nineteen frankly, and really even into
twenty twenty. When was George Springers last year twenty nineteen
mm hm, he would be the one that I would
have thought they'd try to go do this with simply

(39:37):
because it's been platoon platoon, platoon filling you know, type
of guys in center field since the day he left.

Speaker 8 (39:45):
This is just you're talking about a positional.

Speaker 7 (39:47):
See, I don't think they're get they have gone after
these guys so much for necessity, but rather this is
who the owner wants back. Well yea, that's why I
don't think George fits into that group.

Speaker 6 (39:57):
But I'm what I'm saying is, in the case of
center field, you just haven't had that echelon type of player,
that caliber of player since he walked out the door.
This is a very different, quirky, interesting scenario where you've
got a guy to replace Bregman and now he's hurt,
and now what's gonna happen when he gets healthy again?

Speaker 7 (40:17):
Yeah, the guy that replaced Bregman made the All Star team.
Essak Perettis the guy who's more placing. Parrettis has been
even better than that. Offensively, He's hitting over four hundred
as an astro in his nine games. His ops is
well over the thousand. He's got five straight multi hit games.
Back to Springer, though Springer was who he was obviously
among the leaders offensively and emotionally for this team for

(40:40):
the juice that he brought, but the moment he walked out,
had he stayed, he would have been the second or
third best outfielder. The other two guys would have passed him,
Kyle Tucker at some point. Obviously, you'red on Alvarez similarly.
So I think that's how you kind of say, well,
centerfield used to be a huge strength. Well now even
as a quote unquote weakness.

Speaker 8 (41:00):
We're fine.

Speaker 6 (41:01):
And you have had defensive studs out in that position.
So even if their bat wasn't the same, he didn't
have all that much of a drop off, no offense
to what George Springer did in the field. All Right,
Carlos Correa, we will hope hopefully hear from him when
we come back to begin the three o'clock hour.

Speaker 3 (41:17):
Next The A Team on Sports Talk seven.

Speaker 1 (41:21):
Ninety to lifelong Houston sports guys named Adam Talking Your
Team's Adam Clinton and Adam Wexler are the A Team.

Speaker 6 (41:39):
Our number two of a Monday edition of The A Team.
It's Sports Talk seven ninety. It is now simulcast on
Space City Home Network. He is Adam Wexler. My name
is Adam Clanton. Cole Thompson is our producer. We are
awaiting the arrival of Carlo's Correa to meet with the
media over at diyk And Park. First time he will
be doing that since being traded back to the Astros.

(42:02):
Had a long road trip ahead of the team when
they acquired, reacquired, I guess acquired him this time, and
he's looking to I mean, there's a lot of there's
a lot of subplots. There's a lot of stuff going
on at dyk and Park tonight. This is the first
time Alex Bregman is going to play since leaving via
free agency in the offseason to sign with the Boston

(42:22):
Red Sox, the I guess finishing team of several he
was rumored to be tied to, knew he was probably
going to be leaving the Astros, didn't know exactly where
he would wind up. It ended up being the Red Sox.
So he gets his return tonight. Carlos is going to
be introduced to the crowd. It's gonna be a lot
of things going into this, and they're coming off of
a series in which they took two out of three

(42:43):
from the Yankees over the weekend. Carlos Cooreo was a
big part of why they were able to do that.
He and al Tuve reunited, so to speak, and both
doing a lot of damage, much like Alex Bregman did
against an old playoff nemesis. So it's very interesting turn
of events for this first game of this massive homestand
now is the Astros are trying to fight off the

(43:03):
Mariners only a half game up.

Speaker 7 (43:05):
Yeah, very good vibes from the Astros from the moment
these deals. Remember, they also added two other players. They
also added Jeremy Payne on the very first game back
on August first, to begin what was a nine game
road trip that started badly. They lost each of the
first three games. They ended up winning two of the
three series that they played. They won four games over
the last six. Again, they didn't finish with a winning
record on the road trip, but they still maintain their

(43:28):
spot atop this division, but just barely by that half game.
Mariners have definitely take advantage of a boost from the
acquisitions that they made. Caleb Ferguson's been good out of
the bullpen, Josh Naylor has been insanely good at first
base offensively, and they've been able to not get anything
from Aohaneiosuarez and have it not mean nothing. They've lost
one game since they've acquired him. He is an ops

(43:50):
of three fifty seven. Nice if you're you know, I guess,
using a weapon of some kind, but not if you're
a major league All Star caliber hitter.

Speaker 8 (43:57):
He's terrible.

Speaker 7 (43:58):
He's been awful as a Mariner second go around, and
unfortunately they won all the time while he's been out there,
so it's likely to change. But maybe when he gets
helpful and starts hitting the ball, they'll start losing. I
don't know what we'll be sending them in another direction,
but it's not the first time they've started to play well.
They've been playing very well for a pretty decent amount
of time.

Speaker 6 (44:17):
All Right, we are about to hear from Carlo's Korea
for the first time since returning to the Astros. He's
apparently taking the podium right now, so we'll go live
over to Dyke and Park and see what's going on
in the world of Carlo's career. And you're Houston Astros.

Speaker 5 (44:33):
Thank you.

Speaker 7 (44:37):
As he takes very very very quiet questions from the
media and the Texans press or the Astros press conference room,
he'll respond to them in a much louder tone. I
have no doubt you'll all be able to hear it brilliantly.

Speaker 5 (44:49):
Well, first, he was surreal.

Speaker 12 (44:50):
You know, I never thought I'll get the chance to
put on this uniform on again. And yeah, I'm blessed
that I get to lose again in front of all
the fancier in Houston. We're very happy, to say the least.
My whole family is super excited, and uh, you know,
it's been it's been a good week and uh, we
just want to keep going.

Speaker 9 (45:10):
Okay, Cam and Will and then Chandler, Hey, Carlos, can.

Speaker 8 (45:14):
You just talk about what's different about it? You have
to be in a way, what's you learn about yourself?
And you were in Minnesota and then coming back here.

Speaker 5 (45:21):
You know, a lot of things. You know.

Speaker 12 (45:23):
Uh, you go to a different team and different philosophies. Uh,
you know, obviously different players, different coaching stuff and all that.
So it takes time to settle in. But once you
settle in, you know, it's it's it's all the same.
You you do the best that you can. You go
out there, you bring the work, you focus on the
dings that you can control, and you try to win
and win championships. And uh, you know, I was able
to give Minnesota a couple of playoff wins where you know,

(45:46):
they were searching for that for almost two decades, and uh,
that was a cool moment. But you know, it got
to the point where you know, it's we we didn't
keep trying to build a better team, and it started
like a rebuild process and that's when this opportunity he
came along.

Speaker 9 (46:01):
Ka Will Chandler with that out here, Now.

Speaker 5 (46:05):
Do you feel like a dude player like reborn type
of good season? Absolutely?

Speaker 12 (46:10):
You know, when when when you get a chance to
go out there, make the playoffs, win championships, Uh, there's
a fire in every athlete that just makes you go
out there and compete to the highest that were possible.

Speaker 5 (46:20):
And also being at third base.

Speaker 12 (46:21):
I don't get us tire, so I feel like my
legs had a lot fresher.

Speaker 5 (46:26):
I love it. I love it.

Speaker 12 (46:27):
It's a I tell that guy's it's a gift from God.

Speaker 5 (46:30):
Man.

Speaker 12 (46:30):
I only move when the boys hit at me, and
when I'm in the visitors dougout, I walk to the
to the bench because he's like three steps away. So
when I get home, I don't even feel like I
played the game.

Speaker 13 (46:45):
Uh, what'd you guys tell him?

Speaker 8 (46:52):
Question from Chandler roam about what they do.

Speaker 12 (46:54):
I played for the actions before because every day they
watch highlights.

Speaker 5 (46:57):
And uh, they love base with a lot.

Speaker 12 (46:59):
So you know, when I'm on the road, my wife
will played him highlights and she would explained to them
like I played with the Astros and the championship and
all that, and he's been watching Minnesota. So when I
waved my notary clause, I called my wife right after,
and uh, I say, hey, boys, I gotta tell you something.
I said, We're not gonna be with Minnesota anymore. Now,

(47:19):
we're gonna be back with the Houstern Naturals. Had the
videos you've been watching off Poppy in the playoffs, and he.

Speaker 5 (47:25):
Got super happy and excited.

Speaker 12 (47:26):
He's like, yeah, like I want to I want to
see you playing the playoffs all that. So it was
it was a really cool moment because I want my
kids to to get a chance to see me go
out there and win another championship.

Speaker 9 (47:37):
Okay, will Brian and then Mike, I'm sorry, Brian, you nexcellent, Like.

Speaker 14 (47:46):
Alice is back and you went through that when you
came back.

Speaker 5 (47:49):
In the tribute video and everything.

Speaker 14 (47:50):
Just what do you think that's going to be like
for him?

Speaker 15 (47:52):
And if you had a chance to talk.

Speaker 12 (47:53):
To him, Yeah, I talked to him a lot throughout
the season, Like you know, we we talk about certain
pictures and approach all that. But it's a lot of
mixed feelings when you when you get to come back
for the first time, you build a lot of great
relationships in this clubhouse and with the city everywhere you go.
You know, it's a it's a baseball town, so everybody

(48:14):
knows their players here and they take care of them.
So definitely is gonna have a lot of mixed feelings.
But you know, he's very composed and he's very professional,
so he will handle it the best way O get here.

Speaker 6 (48:25):
Then Christy was the chance to play for Joe Spot
as manager.

Speaker 8 (48:30):
Part of the appeal to from doctor Houston.

Speaker 13 (48:32):
And what's impressed you.

Speaker 16 (48:33):
About him the manager?

Speaker 5 (48:35):
Absolutely?

Speaker 12 (48:35):
I always knew he was gonna be a great manager.
And uh, you know, when he was our infield coach,
when I was here and our bench coach, I always
had a great connection with him from the get go.

Speaker 5 (48:47):
You know, we we share a lot of the same values.
He's from Puerto Rico.

Speaker 12 (48:53):
He loves glove work, he loves talking chop and uh,
I knew that we'll connect right away. And now that
he's the manager, you know, I I love having conversations
with him going to the office.

Speaker 5 (49:03):
On the plane, I will still with him and chat.

Speaker 12 (49:05):
And it's it's good to to have that relationship with
your manager.

Speaker 9 (49:10):
Okay, Christy Greg and then Jason Bristol.

Speaker 8 (49:14):
I'm sure there's a lot.

Speaker 6 (49:15):
But what's the best thing about being back with the.

Speaker 5 (49:20):
Best thing I've been back with the Asters? I get
to play with Hotel do it.

Speaker 12 (49:23):
And to be honest with you, I as soon as
I got to Boston, I gave a big heart I
told him I missed him. He's a do nunbelievable player.
But you know the human side of it. When I
get to hang out with him after the games.

Speaker 5 (49:34):
We had to go eat after the games with just.

Speaker 12 (49:37):
To talk chop and and we talk at the same level.

Speaker 5 (49:39):
It's it's it's.

Speaker 12 (49:41):
Something that I definitely miss a lot, and and I
get to do it again, So I'm not gonna take
it for granted.

Speaker 8 (49:47):
One of the hardest.

Speaker 5 (49:50):
Absolutely, absolutely yeah.

Speaker 12 (49:51):
The one of the hardest parts was just leaving the
players that you know, I grew up playing with Lance mccallers.

Speaker 5 (49:57):
I grew up, I grew up playing.

Speaker 12 (49:59):
We went through the whole mind early system and then
all the time I'm not playing behind him anymore, and
I'm like, wow, that's like those are lations you miss.

Speaker 9 (50:07):
A lot, Okay, Greg Bailey, Jason Bristol and then Dan Matthews.

Speaker 14 (50:13):
Coming back here is when you get trade you put
your life kind of back together. Have you been able
to Are you in your house? What is that drive
like today? As you drive in you did it a
thousand times, you get to do it again, and what
is it like actually walking into back clubhouse.

Speaker 12 (50:28):
It's so much better because, like I said before, it's
a second chance to come back here and put on
this uniform. And it's it's a chance that I will
never take for granted. I'm gonna go out there and
give it my best every single day I go out there.
But my wife took care of everything during the trade.
I was on the road for ten days and she
packed everything up in Minnesota, chipped it over here. Then

(50:49):
she flew in with the kids and unpacked everything. So
I got home and everything was ready to go. You know,
it's uh, she did an amazing job. So I got
a good one.

Speaker 17 (51:00):
Dan Carlos, How has father impacted you as as a
baseball I think the thing about being a father is
that the kids don't do what you tell them.

Speaker 12 (51:11):
They do what they see. So you level up as
a human just so they can follow and emulate everything
you're doing by the way you speak, the way you
handle yourself, the way you control your emotions, and the
way you go about your business every day, and they're
watching closely their sponges. So ever since my kid was born,
I've been, you know, trying to be a better version
of myself just for them to follow. And uh, you know,
I'm very proud of the way they're coming along.

Speaker 9 (51:33):
Okay, Dan, And then back to Kim.

Speaker 15 (51:37):
Carlos, you came back into the flat house leadership role
you had before. How did you kind of try to
navigate naturally letting that kind of come.

Speaker 12 (51:46):
Back when I came back here now, I had a
conversation where I do it. First at a couple of
things that I wanted to implement, he said, you can
do whatever you want, so he gave me a green light.
And then I had a conversation with Spala. He told
me the same thing, and uh, you know, I've been
talking to all the guys and We've been building great
relationships already with the new kids, uh that I didn't

(52:08):
know before, And I feel like we're we're in a
really good spot right now, moving.

Speaker 9 (52:12):
Forward, Okay in the back, and then kim oh.

Speaker 8 (52:16):
Waing up on what do you think the fand receptions
will be like for him?

Speaker 5 (52:19):
To a lot of love. Man.

Speaker 12 (52:21):
He gave the city two championships, a lot of them
forgettable moments, and he's an unbelievalle human that was connected
not only here at the Bullbar, also with the city
and and and all the community stuff that he did
and he keeps doing so the city is definitely going
to show him a lot.

Speaker 9 (52:37):
Of love Okay, Kim, and then Randy.

Speaker 6 (52:41):
Can you talk about what you see from Nia and how.

Speaker 9 (52:44):
That relationship is song.

Speaker 12 (52:46):
So I always saw the talent and and and something
special and then he was able to put it all
together moving moving forward this year, give me one second.
This offseason we worked together and uh, you know.

Speaker 5 (53:01):
We got we got to talk.

Speaker 12 (53:03):
We got to talk chop talk, hitting, talk, routines and
all that, and I could see that he was already
taking that next step to be becoming a superstar. And
then you've seen you've seen it on fold this year.
I mean, he's an umbelievable player, one of the best
choices in the league, already at his young age. And uh,
I'm very proud of the way that he's handling himself.

Speaker 9 (53:22):
Okay, a couple more before he was just over Spanish.
We got Randy Leah and then will go ahead, Randy.

Speaker 15 (53:30):
Hey, Carlos, he asked the question about about Alice and
I the city's going crazy since this trade went down
with her return, and talk much about what that reception
is going to be like for you when you're introduced
and maybe that first.

Speaker 13 (53:44):
At that and what that's going to mean to you
to supports her tonight.

Speaker 12 (53:49):
My wife has been telling me everywhere she goes the
cities is uh, it's very excited, but I don't wanna.
I don't want to visual, I said, don't want to visual.
I just want to be present in that moment and
soak it in, enjoy it and just have fun with
the fans.

Speaker 9 (54:05):
Heleah and then will car reunion.

Speaker 8 (54:08):
That as people are talking about the pictures or a TV.

Speaker 13 (54:12):
I know you play on the same team his kids
for Rigo.

Speaker 8 (54:15):
Can you tell us a little bit aboulp what you
remember from that, how cool it is to.

Speaker 6 (54:19):
Keep with them.

Speaker 12 (54:20):
Yeah, we're talking about it the other day, coming from
Puerto Rico South Park, Puerto Rico, where not anybody they
wouldn't go down there to watch baseball players, and we
had to go to the north side of Puerto Rico
to expose our talents and for scouts to be able
to see us.

Speaker 5 (54:37):
And all that.

Speaker 12 (54:38):
And to be here right now with him, sharing the
same clubhouse, going out there winning games together, contributing to
a team.

Speaker 5 (54:45):
I feel surreal, man, And.

Speaker 12 (54:47):
It's it's a story I will tell my kids.

Speaker 5 (54:49):
Yeah, I mean that picture.

Speaker 12 (54:51):
I showed it to them and I told them this
was probably when when he was little like you guys,
and I worked hard to get to where I am
right now. You guys can do it too. So I
hope stories like that and and pictures like that can
service motivation for the next generation.

Speaker 9 (55:06):
Kay Will and Jesus, you.

Speaker 15 (55:08):
Said you wanted to implement something as you talk about
A and Joel, do you just shine a light on 'em?

Speaker 13 (55:12):
Was on some things that you wanted to im.

Speaker 12 (55:14):
Bluma here Just this might be a little superficial, but
just things that made the acts organization. What what do
you guys know and not our customed to see for
the past decade. And uh, I feel like with all
the young guys, it's important to for for them to
understand that we didn't get here by just showing up
and playing. We got here because we were prepared, because
we studied, because we analyzed, because we took advantage of,

(55:38):
you know, the philosophy of of of the teams that
we were facing, and we knew what those flaws were.
And uh, you know, we're we're in a good spot
right now.

Speaker 9 (55:45):
Kay Jesus Carves, how would you compare the first time
you stepped into what was minting made part is showing
up today, k how did you feel and if you could.

Speaker 13 (55:55):
Look back to when you were a seventeen year old
kid the first.

Speaker 12 (55:58):
Time you showed up here, let me tell you I
was a very very happy man walking down the tunnel again.
I walked up for the past three years. Obviously I
was on the business side, but coming here as as
far as the home team, it's a special feeling and
it takes me back to when I was twenty ors
so and I, you know, took that walk and my

(56:19):
dream was accomplished. We'll becoming a big league player. But
now you know, we have we have new goals and
we're going to try to accomplish them.

Speaker 9 (56:27):
Actually have a picture of Carlos when he was seventeen
years old. Look there, Wow, seems like yesterday. We'll switch
over to Spanish.

Speaker 6 (56:34):
All right, So there's a little bit of what's going
on over at Dike and Park, the Astros and Carlos,
Korea getting together to hopefully win more World Series championships.
You heard it. There a lot to react to, and
we will do that when we come back here on
a Monday edition of the program.

Speaker 3 (56:51):
The a t on Sports Talk seven ninety.

Speaker 6 (56:57):
Back at here on a Monday edition of The Eight
Teams Sports Talks of a ninety space City home network.
You heard from Carlos Carrea there last segment WEX. I
think the thing that stood out well the quote of
the press conference was obviously, what's the best thing about
being back with the Astros, and that is playing with
Jose Altuve again.

Speaker 8 (57:15):
That is going to be what everybody takes away from that.

Speaker 6 (57:18):
But I think something that I know, we haven't talked
about it on the show, and I don't think a
lot of people have talked about it, and it's it's
a very interesting non baseball subplot to this feel good story.
He like, his one kid was tiny when he left
the Astros to sign elsewhere in free agency. Now he's

(57:39):
got two kiddos and they're both ecstatic about Daddy playing
where they still have a home and where his career
got started. And you heard a lot of the family
type discussion as much as anything baseball related in that
press conference.

Speaker 8 (57:56):
Yeah, it was.

Speaker 7 (57:57):
I was not really surprised by that that you mentioned
off the time, the first answer that he gave about
the best part of being back. I also was very
unsurprised about I'm not sure why people were at the beginning.
He loves third base. He wants to play third base.
He was always going to play third base. It's just
a matter of when, and now the circumstances dictated, Well
when is now. It's going to happen for this team.

(58:19):
They have an elite level shortstop. I was talking about
Peretis making the All Star team. Well, the shortstop made
the All Star team. He's playing next to one All Star.
He's not taking over for that All Star. He's taking
over for the injured, not on the field All Star unfortunately,
and obviously with his kids and Daniella, he did the
right thing.

Speaker 8 (58:35):
And we know from knowing her here he got a
good one. She's an All Star.

Speaker 6 (58:39):
She's taking care of everything and you know, making her
way back to Houston, her home as well.

Speaker 8 (58:43):
So I do think it's a pretty interesting scenario.

Speaker 7 (58:45):
And it was nice to hear him describe the excitement
from his kids and coming back to Houston and I
get to want to see you in the playoffs, and
he said, I want to one to back here to
win another championship. I mean, they might not remember it,
but it actually happened Minnesota. The Carlos Carrea Minnesota Twins

(59:06):
not only went to the playoffs, they advanced in the
playoffs while Carlos Correa was there, something that franchise had
not done in forever.

Speaker 8 (59:14):
Then they ran into the Astros.

Speaker 6 (59:16):
They ran into Jose Bray you specifically, I mean, he
did have a nice home run in that series. But yeah,
it is a feel good situation and it doesn't like
for all the talk about and you mentioned this last
segment or the segment before the press conference, I should say, yeah,
the owner did want him, just like you know, he
made jokes about it. Well, Jim Crane wants it to happen,

(59:38):
So whether or not it makes sense, I mean I
said that on a video we cut before the trade deadline. Well,
I don't know if this makes sense from a baseball perspective,
it sure looks like it does so far.

Speaker 7 (59:48):
Yeah, I had envisioned him with an uptick offensively, not this.
Didn't expect him to have five straight game he's just happy.
He didn't expect him to have an eight game hitting streak.
Didn't expect him to hit over four spec him to
have almost an eleven hundred oh ps and I know
that won't last forever.

Speaker 8 (01:00:04):
But he hit a shot and no doubter over the
monster in Boston.

Speaker 7 (01:00:09):
He hit a second shot in Yankee Stadium yesterday, both
of them absolute no doubters in front of a small
crowd in Yankee Stadium because there weren't that many fans left,
and obviously the majority of them are crying and their
Yankees fans. And obviously the first home run came in
front of a good Red Sox crowd. There are plenty
of Astros fans at all their road games. In Boston

(01:00:30):
is no different, but it's totally different what's going to
happen either in this series or the second series of
this brief Homestand because he will homer, he will hit
a ball where he's hit balls before calling it.

Speaker 6 (01:00:43):
I mean, come on, when they traded for him, he
had seven, correct, he's got nine now, it's unbelievable. I'm
telling you, I'm not even kidding when I say he's happy. Yeah,
well can help, there's no doubt about it. But I
do think some of the things. I think it's, you know,
the change of scenery stuff sometimes come into play. He's
also got voices, he's familiar with the best baseball Now again,

(01:01:04):
not to make stories up, he had an awesome offensive
season in Minnesota last year.

Speaker 7 (01:01:12):
He just wasn't healthy for the whole year. It's not
like he's been not nearly the hitter that he was
in Houston. The season he had last year would have
been one of his best season no matter where he was.
This year wasn't the same.

Speaker 8 (01:01:21):
This year.

Speaker 7 (01:01:22):
He was more like an average offensive player with very
little extra base power.

Speaker 8 (01:01:27):
He drove in very few runs.

Speaker 7 (01:01:28):
He wasn't hitting for a particularly good average, and obviously
the ops went along with it. In the low seven hundreds.
The low seven hundreds is not good. You're looking if
that's the seventh or eighth or ninth best hitter in
your lineup. Okay, you want better than that, especially in
the heart of your lineup. He's been batting clean up
for the Astros. He'll be batting second in tonight's lineup.

Speaker 6 (01:01:48):
Today's lineup is interesting.

Speaker 8 (01:01:50):
We'll hit him with it one right now.

Speaker 6 (01:01:51):
You've got the two guys, one who replaced the other
going one too. So when Carreo, you know, left in
free agency, Jeremy Pania was the heir apparent. He's leading
off in his familiar spot. But yeah, Correa is batting second.
Jose al Tuve is batting third and dhing tonight, Christian
Walker is back in the cleanup spot and Jiner Diez

(01:02:12):
will be catching and batting third. Ramonioius with the second
base assignment tonight, then it's Dubon and left field, Chas
McCormick in center, Cam Smith and Wright, and then of
course the return of Christian Javier, which is somehow being buried.

Speaker 8 (01:02:27):
It really shouldn't be.

Speaker 7 (01:02:28):
Some point tonight, I would imagine we'll see heyesus Sanchez,
but this is the second straight game the Astros face
the left handed pitcher. He did start yesterday against Max Freed,
did as you'd expect for someone who can't hit left
handed pitching, and unfortunately that is part of Sanchez's major
league career and it's even more pronounced this year. Another
lefty today, so he is not in the lineup, an
opportunity for him to kind of soak things in early

(01:02:50):
in his first game as an Astro at minute Dyke
in Park. But that is an interesting lineup, but I
think that's really what necessitates the move from four to
two for Korea. And yeah, we have not spent enough
time on the starting pitcher tonight. He's what gets everything.
What starts tonight is a big pop from Korea exiting

(01:03:10):
the dugout, and then Christian Javier is gonna make his
way to the mount, pick up the baseball and throw
the first pitcher of tonight's game.

Speaker 8 (01:03:16):
And it's not ceremonial, it counts. It's part of the game.

Speaker 7 (01:03:19):
Before we hit this break here, Unfortunately, news from the
Texans practice facility. Brevin Jordan went down during practice today
clutching his knee, writhing in pain, loudly, crying out loud
and screaming no. According to reporters out there, John Alexander Gjbnemy,
Sam Warren, Aaron Wilson and others, and was carted off

(01:03:40):
the field before Demiko grabbed the team together, much like
they did when they were at the Greenbrier with the CJ.
Gardner Johnson injury. Though I don't suspect I will end
up getting better news, but you never know. Bad for
Brevin and that he worked his way back and was
he looked awesome at Campesky played and played in Saturday's game.
We'll talk more about that here from Steve Sparks as

(01:04:02):
well when we come back here.

Speaker 9 (01:04:03):
On the A team.

Speaker 3 (01:04:05):
The A team on Sports Talk seven ninety.

Speaker 8 (01:04:16):
It is the A team Sports Talks seven ninety.

Speaker 6 (01:04:20):
You know, we give Wex a hard time because we
call him a wet blanket on the show, and it's
it's all in good fun.

Speaker 8 (01:04:28):
It's it's what we do here.

Speaker 6 (01:04:29):
It's kind of his his designated role, even though he's
not actually a wet blanket most of the time. A
real wet blanket would tweet something like this in the
middle of the Carlos Carea press conference, you know, getting
back together here in Houston for his home debut since
being acquired in that trade. Chad tweeted in we don't

(01:04:50):
need him. He chose to leave. Screw him, Like I
sometimes some of you, I don't understand what you're thinking.
Are you that miserable in your life?

Speaker 5 (01:04:58):
That?

Speaker 6 (01:04:59):
And I say, because I knew that Wex would be
able to just rattle off these numbers, they said, Yeah,
who needs a four four H five average ten ninety eight.
Oh p has five straight multi hit games in an
eight game hitting streak. I hope he's not going to
the game tonight, and in fact, I hope he doesn't
go to a game for the rest of the year.
And I hope he never goes to a game again,
because that's the stupidest thing I've ever read.

Speaker 8 (01:05:18):
On a day like home, Cummings usually seem like a
what's wrong with you? Chad?

Speaker 7 (01:05:22):
Like, he's usually something associated with Wow, this is neat
a player who's literally not going to be on the
team tonight. He's gonna be playing for the other team,
the team trying to beat you, the team trying to
have a better record than you, because Boston and Houston
almost have identical records now, Boston a second place team,
the Astros a first place team. But Alex Bregman and
they're gonna salute him, They're gonna give him a tribute video.

Speaker 8 (01:05:42):
And I would think the majority of us are like, yeah,
that's fine. Chad's gonna hate it. Like you you you
got to you.

Speaker 7 (01:05:48):
You're a fan of the team. You got to enjoy
your time as a fan of the team. Largely because
of these two players, one of them has given the
okay he could have said no. I guess the second
time he said no to the Astros. The first time
when they offered him way, way, way, way less than
three other major league teams. He signed with three of them,
he signed with the Mets, Giants and Twins for way

(01:06:10):
more money than the Astros offered. Ultimately, a cold feet
had him landing in Minnesota. Then he signed a second
deal with Minnesota, the contract that the Astros are now
working with Carlos koret Now. He could have said no
a second time. He could have said, h I'm not
waving my Troe trade clause. This Minnesota plan of not
ever winning again.

Speaker 18 (01:06:29):
I like it.

Speaker 8 (01:06:30):
I'm staying here. This is gonna be awesome. I know
the Astros are wanting.

Speaker 7 (01:06:34):
Me back, and I know it would be great I
get to play with Jose again, but I don't want
to know. Just like you said, Chad don't need me
and I don't want to be there.

Speaker 8 (01:06:43):
He could have said no.

Speaker 7 (01:06:44):
He could have said, I have no trade clause for
the reason, for a reason, and I'm not waving it
just to go back to Houston.

Speaker 8 (01:06:50):
But he said yes.

Speaker 7 (01:06:51):
So many many other people who have enjoyed his nine
games here so far, have enjoyed the Astros winning their
last two series, have enjoyed him pointing to his heart,
not his jersey, not replicating some Jose Altuve, don't tear
my jersey off moment from many years ago.

Speaker 8 (01:07:10):
Uh, I think it was. It was pretty interesting.

Speaker 6 (01:07:13):
It was brought to my attention by somebody we both
know earlier this morning, and I hadn't really thought about
it doing the video and all that I watched it.
I've seen the home run a million times. If he
was doing it, the sequence is there, but it was
very slight. Yeah, to me, it was not.

Speaker 7 (01:07:31):
If you want to say it was related to Jose Altuve,
I would say it this way. He pointed to where
you dumbs think Jose was wearing his buzzer, and then
he pointed his non buser, waved his finger back and forth, saying,
there isn't one there. I just somehow managed in a
road ballpark to hit a home run without the use
of a buzzer, a trash can or anything else. Because

(01:07:52):
this just in, and this could be from Carlos, from George,
from Kyle, from Jordan, from Jose, from anybody.

Speaker 8 (01:07:59):
I'm good at baseball. Well, this just in breaking news.

Speaker 6 (01:08:02):
I'm even John Boy's stupid outfit was admitting it like
Jose al Tuve's and I can't remember the exact stat
that he used. It was like thirteenth best among all
the teams.

Speaker 8 (01:08:14):
They weren't admitting it.

Speaker 6 (01:08:14):
They were trying to tell people to jump back into
their homes and off of the ledge that jose Al
Tuove doesn't own the Yankees.

Speaker 3 (01:08:21):
He's just just good.

Speaker 8 (01:08:22):
He doesn't own the Yankees. He's better against a bunch
of other teams. It just feels like he is putting together.

Speaker 6 (01:08:26):
That video also afforded me the if you want to
call it, opportunity to rewatch in its entirety. Uh, Cody
Bellinger's spring training little scrum with the media there in
the clubhouse where he just completely out and out lied
about certain things.

Speaker 8 (01:08:43):
That's where Carlos Korea is. If you don't know the facts.

Speaker 6 (01:08:46):
SoundBite came from people thought, oh look at this unrepentant uh,
just arrogant guy. No, if you watch the Ken Rosenthal interview,
nobody was gonna actually nobody that doesn't have a brain
actually sit down and watch both of those back to
back like they should. You'd really get some context as
to why people like me and others who are here

(01:09:07):
in Houston and we lived through it and dealt with
some of the dumbs as wex just mentioned that do
that kind of thing online because they're just that's what
they are, but like, that's why Korea did that. That's
a very minuscule SoundBite in a wide ranging it's eighteen
minutes long interview with Ken Rosenthal where he'd like painstakingly
tells the truth about what they did in fact do

(01:09:31):
and absolutely what they weren't doing and for how long
they were or were not doing it. Cody Bellinger's like,
now he's cheated for three years, just says it as
if it's fact. If you go back, and he's so
condescending and cocky about it, and then he can't he
multiple times references and I'm just so excited about the
fact that we got a great guy in our clubhouse.

Speaker 8 (01:09:50):
We just trade a four named Mookie Betts.

Speaker 6 (01:09:51):
Yeah, the guy who cheated against you the year, you know,
a couple of years prior to cheat you out of
another World Series. You're not mad about that guy, or
David Price or anybody else that was on that team,
but Carlos Korea and jose Al Twove mainly over here. Yeah,
he stole an MVP from Aaron Judge. It's just asinine.

Speaker 7 (01:10:10):
Cal Rawley's gonna steal it from him this year, steal
it from him or just take it. No, he's gonna
steal it from him. You don't earn it, you steal.
If Judges is an active Major League Baseball player and
he doesn't win MVP, then you've stolen it.

Speaker 8 (01:10:22):
You got to remember, this is a guy who was
welcoming guys like Mookie Betts. Yeah, good, good ball players.
Oh and Joe Kelly. That was my favorite ball players.
All of them. All of them cheaters. They all cheated.

Speaker 7 (01:10:34):
They all played for a team that was sanctioned by
Major League Baseball for doing something illegal to help them
play better baseball.

Speaker 6 (01:10:40):
In a year in which they beat the Dodgers starring
Cody Bellinger. Well, I wouldn't say starring, because he was
taking his downward turn at that point. It's funny if
you look at his numbers, and if you look at
his numbers in the World Series against the Astros, where
he was absolute crap. He hit one home run that
was basically consequential, and the rest of the time he
was terrible.

Speaker 7 (01:10:58):
I think this is why they actually acquired Cody Bellinger
and signed him and brought him back. It wasn't because
he's good and he has kind of turned it around
in the postseason. Oh wait, now, that's exactly what it is.
Because he turned it around in the postseason. They wanted
somebody there who could tell Aaron Juddes it's possible. Man, dude,
I hit three eighty five and twenty eight all right.

(01:11:19):
I had a three eighty five ops in twenty eighteen.
Oh in twenty seventeen, do you think that was bad?
I struck out twenty nine times, almost half my bats.
And then I came back and had an ops of
seven to seventy and nine oh six two years later,
and even was part of a World Series team in
a partial season. You can do it too, man. Just hey,
my locker's right down here. If you need anything from me,

(01:11:39):
just let me know. I am your new Sinsey, I
am your mentor. I am Cody Bellinger. You can come
to me with anything you need.

Speaker 6 (01:11:47):
Airy well, I don't think that the Yankees necessarily want
him to provide everything he can give.

Speaker 8 (01:11:51):
Yes, they do.

Speaker 7 (01:11:52):
He's got That's what they want. Aaron Judge to be
a winner, Cody Bellinger winner.

Speaker 6 (01:11:58):
The best part about this weekend other than the series win,
was that Cody Bellinger had a front row seat to
all those home runs that Corea and Al two Bay
were hitting those cheaters. Its just amazing to me the
audacity of a guy like that. But hey, he's right
where he belongs. And hopefully he won't even make the
postseason this year because that's the that's the trick they're
on right now. Aaron Judge noted MVP candidate and the

(01:12:20):
New York Yankees.

Speaker 8 (01:12:22):
All right, we will come right back.

Speaker 6 (01:12:23):
We are going to wrap things up this three o'clock
hour by checking in with Steve Sparks. He visited the
station earlier today. We'll hear what he had to say,
plus give you an update on those Astros injuries. It's
all next.

Speaker 16 (01:12:36):
The at on Sports Talk seven ninety. I'm gonna ask
you to call it right now.

Speaker 6 (01:12:53):
On August eleventh, the Astros are a half game up
on the Mariners. They have the Red Sox in town tonight,
followed by the Orioles. The Orioles have been awful. I
think they've lost seven of ten, and both the Astros
and the Mariners will be playing them over the course
of the next couple of weeks. And by the way,

(01:13:14):
both the Astros and the Mariners have really really weak
schedules relatively speaking. The remainder of the year. Who's going
to wind up winning the Al West the Astros. You
sounded very confident when you said that. You didn't even hesitate.

Speaker 5 (01:13:28):
Oh.

Speaker 8 (01:13:28):
Once I heard the question, I already knew the answer.

Speaker 6 (01:13:31):
Okay, explain.

Speaker 7 (01:13:32):
I just think they're going to turn out to get
their thing going at the right time. They're not going
right now, and they still went back to back series
on the road. Clearly they'd like to have not had
their last couple of homestands go the way that they have.
And I think once that gets fixed, which hopefully is
this home stand, you know, take two out of three, twice,
win four out of six, nothing special, just typical stuff

(01:13:55):
you'd expect out of a first place team when they
get back home. Remarkably, they're incredible work from Jason Alexander.
By the way, my thought about Colton Gordon helping this
team today or tomorrow silly, foolish and not gonna happen.
He's not an Astro anymore. He's a Space cowboy. He
was taken off of the active roster and sent down
option down to TRIPAA to open up an active roster

(01:14:18):
spot for Christian Javier, who was activated off the sixty
day IL, but they also had to clear a forty
man roster spot, and I was expected that spot is
the one of Cooper Hummel.

Speaker 8 (01:14:28):
So the Astros are now back in business for now.

Speaker 7 (01:14:31):
Looks like as we roll through the litany of injury updates,
still thirteen players on the IL. I expected Sean Dubin
to pitch for the Astros on this homestand and I
still think that's going to be the case. He'd made
an additional rehab appearance after throwing back to back games
and continues to come out of that both feeling good
about his health and feeling good about the way he's
throwing the baseball. He's working out with the team at

(01:14:53):
the park today. So I would imagine if today or tomorrow,
somebody that's somewhat expendable, especially if it's somebody that has
options and they are used today or tomorrow and thus
would be down for a day or two at the
very least, that could very easily be the move that
allows him to make his way back to the roster.
France and Garcia will continue rehabbing a triple A another

(01:15:16):
start at least for each of them. As they threw
their rehab appearances Thursday of last week for Garcia, Friday
of last week for France, so the timing on when
they will pitch again can be determined off of that.
Mccullor's on a throwing progression, but nothing more significant on
the update from that. It's his very non descriptive about
exactly where things are headed with him. Dana Brown's talked

(01:15:38):
about it and a little more descriptive details. There's going
to be at least a rehab start involved with him
making his way back to the club, and until he
advances his side sessions or live vps or simulated games
things like that, there is not a rehab appearance in
his immediate future that I'm aware of. Brandon Walter the
left elbow inflammation that had him sideline. He had a

(01:15:58):
twenty pitch side session yesterday at the Astros complex, so
hopefully reports on him from how did you feel afterwards
are good? Maybe that goes up to thirty thirty five pitches,
then maybe there's a live VP and a rehab start
or two, because this is going to be an extended
period of time since he was in the rotation best Guests.
I had one of the listeners send in a best

(01:16:19):
guest and said maybe by the end of the month,
question Mark, I think that's reasonable, maybe a little bit
more accelerated, but that is three weeks away. Essentially, as
we're on the eleventh of August, you're pitching, there's your
pitching situation. Yard on Alvarez, he's going through a hitting progression.
He hit on the field with BP for the first
time on Saturday. Joe Spot has explained all these things

(01:16:41):
that they're doing, but haven't exactly talked about where things
are actually going. He hasn't had setbacks that we're aware of,
but the progression and the recovery time is painfully slow,
not literally painfully, but I'm amazed at how slowly things
are going, so obviously must be a little bit more
to it. Jake Myers at the ballpark today. He's going
to head to Florida to continue his rehab. Esak Perettis

(01:17:05):
will join him in Florida later this week to continue
his rehab. Brendan Rodgers also on his way to Florida
to continue his rehab out of the concussion protocol and
hopefully the nasal fracture is also no longer bothersome and
already there is Zach Decenzo, who has also been out
I think a lot longer than people thought when he

(01:17:25):
was initially hurt.

Speaker 6 (01:17:26):
A get a theory on mccullors, and mccullors and Jordon
are being treated similarly similarly, at least as it pertains
to We're not getting a lot of information about what's
taking so long, even though it's two very different things.
Like this is a blister. If a guy gets a blisters,

(01:17:48):
a pitcher gets a blister, most times he misses how
many starts?

Speaker 7 (01:17:54):
I think it depends on how much he pitched with it,
and in his case it seems like he pitched with
it for more than one started.

Speaker 6 (01:17:59):
But how long ago was that? Then he missed that
start because he had a blister. He was like scratched
day of all of a sudden, and we hear he
has a blister. It was three weeks ago.

Speaker 7 (01:18:06):
Roughly he's eligible to come off as of you know,
a couple of days ago. That's a heck of a
blister though, right, But in his case, maybe more so
than in a different pitcher's case. Once the time missed
has happened, the ramp up period is going to be
much more delicate.

Speaker 6 (01:18:22):
And not that they have the luxury of being super deep,
because quite the opposite right now, especially at the pitching.

Speaker 8 (01:18:31):
Situation.

Speaker 6 (01:18:32):
But like, would you be surprised if you found out
like you injected truth serum in the astros brass and
they're like, we're going to slow play this thing with
McCullers because we're just not happy about what we're seeing
when he goes out there prior to the blister.

Speaker 7 (01:18:46):
I think on another part of it is, if that's
the case, you also have to you do have to
consider the roster because the only way to get these
guys and he doesn't need a forty man spot is
on the fifteen day il.

Speaker 8 (01:18:57):
But in order to put him on the roster, you
have to make a roster move.

Speaker 7 (01:19:00):
So what pictures do they have available on the active
roster that still have options, because otherwise, if you're getting
rid of a picture with no options, then he's out
of the organization, right and they really can't afford that
for a picture they're not certain of. Because I think
they're doing the same thing with others like JP Frantz
and Luis Garcia. They're healthy, it's very obviously they're healthy.

Speaker 8 (01:19:20):
Do they believe they can get major She has put
them good numbers, by the way, Well, I.

Speaker 7 (01:19:23):
Think it's more about do they feel comfortable that they
can get major league hitters out every fifth day or
sixth day.

Speaker 8 (01:19:29):
I don't think that they do at this point.

Speaker 7 (01:19:31):
So there's no reason to rush them back because again,
we're not talking about Lance's move only. We're talking about
Lances and Luis's move. And now we're talking about Lance,
Luis and JP's how many other pictures can they afford
to make a move with to eliminate them from the roster.
When you look at who's there, these are all the
guys that got them into this position, whether it's Ochred
Ort or whomever. I mean, once Louis Contreras and Nick Hernandez,

(01:19:53):
now Cooper Hummel and now Colton Gordon. Yeah, you're running
out of the disc You know, players that are expendable
on your roster.

Speaker 8 (01:20:02):
Pesky rules, the options and whatnot.

Speaker 7 (01:20:07):
Yeah, I Sean Dubin is in a different category than
all of those other pitchers. In my opinion, he was
very successful this year. He was pitching the best baseball
for weeks of his major league career and is a
right hander who they need when he's ready, he will
be activated. That's why I say it's going to happen
during this Homestand and he's got three a half. Yes,

(01:20:29):
he had what sounds like a h oh, this is
a coresor too. And maybe when he comes back something,
I don't know what happens. But he's pitched well enough,
he's had enough rehab appearances, has recovered from each of
them without any issue it would appear, so I do
think we'll see him soon.

Speaker 8 (01:20:43):
And if he pitches like he was pitching, then he
helps the team.

Speaker 6 (01:20:45):
But again, like you said, nothing is as excruciatingly slow
as the progression of one number forty four? Can I
get back fast enough? If it all, if it happens
at all this year, and I'm starting to get more
and more skeptical, we shall see. We will come right back.
We will visit the NFL quarterback tears as it pertains

(01:21:06):
to the athletics recent article. Some interesting stuff in there.
When we return.

Speaker 3 (01:21:13):
The eighteen. On Sports Talk seven ninety.

Speaker 1 (01:21:19):
Two lifelong Houston sports guys named Adam Talking your Team.
Adam Clinton and Adam Wexler are the eighteen.

Speaker 6 (01:21:37):
It's straight up four o'clock here in Houston, Texas. It
is the a team Sports Talk seven ninety and Space
City Home Network. We are halfway home on a Monday
edition of the show that will then make way to
not only the return of Carloskorea to the Astros lineup
tonight here in Houston for the first time since being reacquired,
but also you got Alex Bregman in the house tonight

(01:22:00):
with his Red Sox, who, by the way, swept the
Astros the last time these two teams got together up
in Boston. That was a very very that series, coupled
with kind of really I think the start of the
Mariners going on this stretch where they just cannot lose,
and cal Rawley, by the way, has completely dismantled my
argument about the home run derby. He thought that was

(01:22:21):
a really cute discussion we had last week, and then
he just started hitting them all the time. So that's
gonna be interesting to see how these two teams fare,
especially since, as I mentioned last segment, both of them
are gonna hopefully they hope both teams hope they'll be
beating up on the Baltimore Orioles, because that's the series
after this one with the Red Sox. But first things first,
the Astros on Deck show coming up at six o'clock.

Speaker 8 (01:22:43):
Getting you ready for that.

Speaker 6 (01:22:45):
We gave you some of the update on the Astros
injuries last segment and earlier today. It's kind of something
that we've been doing all season long, or all off
season long. We've been talking about the hierarchy of quarterbacks
in the NFL and where CJ. Stroud falls into this,
and more importantly, wex where he falls in relation to

(01:23:08):
where Justin Herbert falls, because everybody loves Justin Herbert. And
the latest I guess, big time article that kind of
goes over this kind of subject is The Athletic with
its NFL quarterback tiers of twenty twenty five. And the
first thing that jumped off the page of me was
the fact that Lamar Jackson wasn't in Tier one already,

(01:23:31):
and I don't. I guess that's because what was it,
Patrick Mahomes was the only guy in that tier last year.

Speaker 7 (01:23:38):
Which kind of gives you a huge, huge asterisk. It
doesn't mean Lamar Jackson and Josh Allen and Joe Burrow
whomever else isn't good. It means we've decided that only
one person belongs there the multiple time Super Bowl champion,
and when you're comparing with each of those of the
three I mentioned, there's zero time super Bowl champions. But

(01:23:59):
I think at this point and not really even because
of how last year went, where Mahomes again went to
the Super Bowl and none of the other three that
we mentioned did, I don't think that's the reason you
did put them all together. And keep in mind, this
is not just Mike Sando who penned the article. He
did just sit down and, you know, say here's what
I think. He actually talked to people inside the NFL executives,

(01:24:21):
you know, inside the league and other parts of the league,
and said what do you think and compiled it and
here are his tiers. So it's a little bit different
than you know, some run of the mill anybody just
saying here's what I think. This is from only from
information gathered from inside the league.

Speaker 6 (01:24:39):
And he wasn't all by his lonesome in the first
tier last year, because two of the top three in
this thing retained their tier from last year. Those would
be Mahomes and Joe Burrow, who were tied for number one,
and then Josh Allen. All of those three were in
the top tier last year. Lamar Jackson jumping a tier,

(01:25:01):
Matthew Stafford jumping a tier, and that's your top five,
so to speak.

Speaker 8 (01:25:08):
I'm not gonna say that Joe Burrow is the same.

Speaker 6 (01:25:11):
As Justin Herbert with regards to my disdain, I think
Joe Burrow is a more talented quarterback and all that
kind of stuff. Joe Burrow feels like in this like
looking at this year's list here, it feels like he's
living on that Super Bowl appearance.

Speaker 8 (01:25:24):
You feel like that a little bit, not even a
little bit. You just think Joe Burrow's the greatest thing
since sliced bread.

Speaker 7 (01:25:30):
Like everybody else, I think he's as good as Josh Allen,
Pat Mahomes and Lamar Jackson. He's a super Bowl talent quarterback.
He will win a super Bowl when the team around
him can do at least a little bit.

Speaker 8 (01:25:43):
You probably, I don't think.

Speaker 7 (01:25:45):
I mean, the fact that Jackson and Alan do both
run and throw kind of makes the comparison for some
people hard. I'm not sure what you disliked about Joe
Burrow's season last year, except the wins and the losses
on a team that plays one side of the ball.
He's on the bench when the worst part of his team,
which is one of the worst outfits in the NFL,
plays half the game. I mean, they need him to

(01:26:07):
play worse so their offense holds onto the ball longer.
They need to run the ball more and have him
score points less so they can keep their defense on
the sideline so they don't lose his offen. They got
cheated out of a game at the beginning of the year,
some would say against the Chiefs on the late call
in the game that resulted in a late Casey field
goal that turned what could have been a very important
early season win into a typical twenty twenty five Bengals loss.

(01:26:31):
But statistically speaking, and I know there's more. You know,
a quarterback is tagged with those stupid win loss stats,
which I do tend to think are dumb. I'm not
sure what you disliked about Joe Burrow's season, except he
couldn't lead his team to wins. Was just he was
destroying the most time the football. This is not about
Joe Burrow in essence as much as it's about what

(01:26:52):
you just said. I think is divvied out differently depending
on the quarterback you're talking about now. He has pedigree
to go with it. He's played seven postseason games, they've
won five of them as a team, they've been to
the Pinnacle and came up short.

Speaker 8 (01:27:11):
So he has that, and he's played well in those games.

Speaker 6 (01:27:15):
And if anything, going on what you just said and
what I said prior to it, I think he should
be given the benefit of the doubt because of what
you just said, way more than Justin Herbert. Tell me
how many games he's won in the postseason?

Speaker 8 (01:27:28):
Again, right, he had. I'm still waiting, right, But nobody
thinks that that's why they're in different tiers.

Speaker 6 (01:27:33):
No, I know that. But but when it comes to
just Justin Herbert Auden's lonesome, he's vastly overrated. If you
want to say Joe Burrow is living on you know,
his Super Bowl appearance and you're blind, it's not necessarily true.
It's a win lost business.

Speaker 7 (01:27:51):
He was the best quarterback in the NFL last year,
throwing the football, played on an awful defensive team. They
still won more than half of their games, led the
league basically in everything.

Speaker 8 (01:27:59):
So he gets us.

Speaker 7 (01:28:00):
There's not excuses for what It's a team game. I
thought I just told you why it's a team game.
I'm not talking about the individual being bad. I'm talking
about the individual being awesome. He is awesome. There's nothing
else to say. He's awesome.

Speaker 6 (01:28:13):
Okay, So he's awesome because you think he is, and
because his defense sucks, that's okay. The fact it's not
applied the same to every quarterback is what I'm saying.

Speaker 8 (01:28:24):
I think it's applied to every quarterback.

Speaker 7 (01:28:26):
If Justin Herbert, I'm trying to figure out how to
I don't even know how to get him into the
first tier in this argument, or to act like he's
being treated like Joe Burrow in some way I'm not.

Speaker 6 (01:28:35):
I'm not saying I want Justin Herbert and that if anything,
you know where I stand on just treated the same
as Lamar Jackson. No, Lamar Jackson was treated like Lamar,
like Jordan. That's what I'm talking about. Guys are treated
differently depending on who you're talking about here, and Lamar
Jackson's the best example of this because even though he's

(01:28:56):
not the traditional throw the quarter you know, throw the
ball quarterback, because he's got you know, he does things
with his legs. I mean, this guy was one of
the best quarterbacks in the NFL right there in the
MVP discussion. Should have probably won it last year for
like three or four years in a row. The Ravens
didn't want to pay him for whatever reason. But like
he's never been talked about as lustily as you're talking

(01:29:18):
about Joe Burrow right.

Speaker 7 (01:29:19):
Now, because his postseason is not comparable. It's worse, much
worse individually his own.

Speaker 6 (01:29:25):
That's because his defense sucked, or has nothing to do
with his defense has to do with his own poor play.
His propensity to throw more picks in the postseason, his
propensity to make worse plays in the postseason.

Speaker 8 (01:29:36):
It's all there. It's all happened.

Speaker 7 (01:29:38):
He's not regarded as a better player than a better passer, clearly,
which is and there's more to it.

Speaker 8 (01:29:44):
I mean, I advocated for him.

Speaker 7 (01:29:46):
I think it was stupid that Josh Allen won the
MVP last year, and I don't even see why. Like,
what's the disc Like Joe Burrow, Josh Allen, Pat Mahomes,
and Lamar Jackson, that's it. They're all the same. They're
in the top tier. They're the best of the best.
You can win a super Bowl with any of them.
They play well enough to win you a super Bowl.
They need the other parts of their team, like Mark
Andrews catching the football, or the Bengals defense playing better,

(01:30:08):
or the Bill's defense playing good for thirteen more seconds.

Speaker 8 (01:30:13):
I mean any number of things. It has nothing to
do with them. Jackson just got there well. Lamar, of
those four quarterbacks, has a clearly, clearly definitive non argue.
He has a worst postseason individual performance career than all
three of them. Josh Allen's putting up all world numbers
nine touchdowns, no picks in a postseason and he loses

(01:30:35):
in Game two to the Chiefs. Burrows won five their
teams he's managed. Even with that team, they didn't weren't
as quite as bad defensively when they were winning so much.
But Lamar has not played well enough to match how
he's played in the regular season, and he's still properly
regarded as a clear top four like the difference between
him and the next guy, Matt Stafford. I guess in

(01:30:56):
this case, yes, even though they all made the top tier,
they're just so much more worthwhile of getting behind than
anybody else in the league. The other twenty eight teams. Totally.
There's no way.

Speaker 6 (01:31:07):
Matt Stafford, even with a super Bowl ring, which three
of the other four do not have. Two of the
other four haven't even been to the super Bowl. And
I would never put Matt Stafford at any stage of
his career, let alone the current stage of his career,
in the same group as them. Would you put Jade
and Daniels ahead of Matt Stafford regardless of the tier?

(01:31:27):
Just like, just talk about the list right now, because
he's immediately ahead of him as it pertains to that, he's,
you know, number six and tier two.

Speaker 8 (01:31:35):
Jaden Daniels going into year two right right after Stafford.
That's what I'm asking. Would you put him ahead of Stafford?

Speaker 7 (01:31:41):
I would have Stafford in Tier two, and then I'd
be arguing about the difference between them is not necessary.
They're very very like I would I would feel similarly.
I mean, I'm I think Jaden Daniels is. It's just
like Ceg I feel the exact same way. After year one.
There he's not getting derailed, He's not gonna have a
sophomore slump. That makes me think differently of him. Maybe
season won't turn out the way you think, but I'm

(01:32:02):
not gonna think less of him. He's not gonna all
of a sudden, not be able to read defenses, not
be able to know when to run, not be able
to carve teams up and lead five hundred touchdown drives
in a row like they were doing last year. Hyperble
like he's great. He's just not Tier one yet I
have no problem with him being at the top of
tier two.

Speaker 6 (01:32:20):
Do you think CJ is too high?

Speaker 7 (01:32:24):
Well, we haven't even told you where CJ is yet.
We've mentioned Jade and Daniels, We've obviously mentioned justin Herbert.
We're talking about quarterbacks. That's all we ever do here
during the off season. But we didn't tell you where.
So we've given you the top six. Stafford and Daniels
are in that top six. Herbert Stroud, super Bowl winner,
Jalen Hurts, Cleveland Brown's cast off, Baker Mayfield. Where are

(01:32:50):
all these guys and where did CJ. Stroud land on
this executive driven list? Yeah, we'll tell you about it next.

Speaker 3 (01:33:00):
On Sports Talk seven ninety It is the A team.

Speaker 6 (01:33:10):
It's Sports Talks seven ninety Space City Hall Network. We
are vehemently arguing, actually, we're just going over a list.
That's what we do here we are so ready for
football that actually counts and means something. The Athletic coming
out with its twenty twenty five quarterback tiers and Pat
Mahomes Noah Surprise, still in the top one, as is

(01:33:34):
Joe Burrow Josh Allen, and then you have the two
that jumped into it from last year, Lamar Jackson and
Matthew Stafford.

Speaker 8 (01:33:44):
I still can't believe they made a list.

Speaker 6 (01:33:47):
I guess it was it those three and twenty twenty
four arem I missing somebody, and then Lamar Jackson and
Matthew Stafford jumped into.

Speaker 8 (01:33:54):
The top tier. That's what it looks like it reads. Okay,
I can't believe Lamar Jackson wasn't in the top tier.

Speaker 6 (01:34:01):
Like even going into twenty the twenty twenty four season,
I would have thought he would have been held in
higher ESTEAM. So we were talking about tier two and
the fact that Jaden Daniels is number six. He's at
the top of that Tier two list. And this is
the description, just in case you're wondering. A Tier two
quarterback can carry his team sometimes but not as consistently.

(01:34:23):
He can handle pure passing situations in doses and or
possesses other dimensions that are special enough to elevate him
above Tier three. But he has a whole or two
in his game. So that's the description of these guys.
And we said that Jaden Daniels is at the top
of that list. We also revealed to you that CJ.
Stroud was in this tier, but we did not tell

(01:34:45):
you where.

Speaker 18 (01:34:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (01:34:45):
Top six, those four that belong in the top tier,
followed by Matt Staff for the beginning of tier two
is Jade Daniels.

Speaker 8 (01:34:50):
He is at number six.

Speaker 7 (01:34:53):
The following quarterbacks find themselves somewhere in Tier two, which
is a list of nine Brock Perty, Dak Prescott, Baker, Mayfield,
Jordan Love, Justin Herbert, Jared Goff, CJ.

Speaker 8 (01:35:08):
Stroud. Justin Herbert is the first of those people. He
is at number seven.

Speaker 7 (01:35:13):
So if you want to pull up the audio from
the fifty other times we've argued about Justin Herbert, feel free.
But we may add more to it here. Herbert Goff
top eight, and that is it, ahead of c. J.
Stroud who comes in at number nine.

Speaker 8 (01:35:28):
Well, technically he's tied at number nine, yep. So, like
I said, the only eight quarterbacks ahead of.

Speaker 6 (01:35:34):
Him, Well, I think Jalen Hurts is the guy that's
getting criminally screwed over in all of these discussions all
summer long.

Speaker 8 (01:35:40):
He just won the Super Bowl.

Speaker 7 (01:35:41):
Yeah, he's kind of the reverse Burrow. His defense is great,
his running game is great, his offensive line is great,
his receiving group is great. So definitely he can't also
be great. I mean, just look at his numbers, Watch
the game executives, watch how he runs his team, executives,
watch the winning plays he makes. Executives like Lamar Jackson

(01:36:05):
and definitely Burrow, there are mistakes. They make mistakes, and
certain quarterbacks not at the very very highest part of
the list are probably gonna make a few more, and
he makes a few more. But I totally agree if
anybody and you just said it, he thinks he's being
criminally underrated. Yes, he's being criminally underrated his whole professional

(01:36:25):
career in Actually, this wasn't trip one to the Super
Bowl for Jalen Hurts, right, and they absolutely were in
the game. They certainly could have been a two time
Super Bowl champ. He plays winning football, like all these
other things, all the stuff. I was basically falling out
of my chair slobbering on about Joe Burrow, like Jalen
Hurts plays winning football. All right, I wrote that down

(01:36:48):
on one page. Now I'm gonna go over to my
quarterback attribute list.

Speaker 8 (01:36:52):
That's number one.

Speaker 6 (01:36:53):
Right right, And it's not game manager either, Like don't
those don't even exist anymore.

Speaker 7 (01:36:59):
I don't over comes his mistakes. He makes something out
of nothing. He's capable of doing things other quarterbacks can't do.
If Lamar Jackson gets to the outside or runs into
multiple tacklers, he's so good he might be able to
slither his way around them or between them, or outrun them. Well,
Jalen Hurts just runs through them.

Speaker 8 (01:37:21):
He does things.

Speaker 7 (01:37:21):
He's capable of doing things I don't think there's another
quarterback currently in the NFL that can do. Of course,
he benefits from all those positive things that the Eagles are.
But when lists get put out, and even this one
that is rooted in evaluations from executives, you're trying to
tell us. I think when I read lists like that,

(01:37:43):
you're trying to say, of course the Eagles win the
Super Bowl if Jared Goff is their quarterback. Of course
they win the Super Bowl. If Justin or cj or
Matt Stafford. Of course they win the Super Bowl because
we think they're all better than Jalen Hurts. Well, then
I don't think that's I just don't look at it
that way. And in this I mean there's a lot
to dissect. I mean, not the least of which is

(01:38:03):
that CJ. Stroud and Jalen Hurts are tied there.

Speaker 6 (01:38:06):
So it's like you said, there are only eight others
that this particular list feels are better.

Speaker 7 (01:38:13):
And it got to at least also add this Tier
two gets you halfway through the league. Correct, Top fourteen
quarterbacks are Tier two.

Speaker 8 (01:38:21):
But and that's okay.

Speaker 6 (01:38:22):
So that's another reason why I just feel like like
we're talking about guys getting benefit of the doubt for
whatever reason. How much longer is Dak Prescott gonna get that?
And I've defended him, you know that? Well, to me,
just look at who is behind him.

Speaker 7 (01:38:38):
Do you like Kyler Murray, Aaron Rodgers, Tua, Trevor Lawrence,
Geno Smith, Sam Darnold more than him? And I didn't
mention Bo Nicks is also top twenty. I think it's
a little early to say you do, but he gave
you every reason to say it after one year but
I don't think Dak Prescott is overvalued or overestimated or
given benefit of the doubt. If he belongs in the chier,

(01:38:59):
he's in the same tier he was in a year ago.
I think he's better than every other quarterback in Tier three.
I mean, you want to put him to the top
of Tier three instead of the bottom of Tier two. Quibbling,
But he's not a top ten quarterback the way he
has recently played. There's too many others, and Baker Mayfield
is one of them that I would value more than
Dak Prescott.

Speaker 8 (01:39:18):
And he's ahead of him on the list.

Speaker 6 (01:39:19):
But don't you think the guy right behind him is
probably qualifies As that same sentence, I.

Speaker 7 (01:39:24):
Think you crush people who like Justin Herbert, while you
could do the same thing for Jordan Love you think
he's overrated, He's doing it differently because he, like Justin Herbert,
basically didn't make any mistakes last year until the playoffs.

Speaker 8 (01:39:39):
He barely threw the ball to the other team. He
was working with a limited group.

Speaker 7 (01:39:43):
He basically had mcaukey and nobody else, and they managed
to make themselves all the way to the playoffs as
the five seed and Jordan loved like the Texans game
is a prime example.

Speaker 8 (01:39:52):
Why were they in the game because the Texans gave
it to him. Well, he made so many mistakes. He
just but he does that. That's what he's done.

Speaker 7 (01:40:00):
I think he had the end of his first year
starting when he and CJ was in year one and
he was at the end of his first year starting,
so that it was very easy to camp them and
they played the very same way. The end of those
seasons for both of them, they were incredible. They were
basically matching each other from afar. You know, week in
and week out, very few mistakes, tons of positive plays,
great play from both of their teams. They went into

(01:40:21):
the playoffs feeling good. They then crushed it Cowboys. I
think he was much worse last year. I think he
made many more mistakes last year. I do think injuries
might have been part of it for him personally, and
the fact that he's who are my top two receivers
this week? They got five or six guys that are interchangeable,
but they could only use three or four each week

(01:40:42):
because somebody was always hurt. And it does sound like excuses,
but I think Love's super talented. But I'm watching him play,
and I'm saying, well, okay, I know he's talented. Now
show me where it's there. Show me the games where
he's winning. Showing me the games where he's doing the
things that you know, make people believe in him. And
seeing him thirteen on this list gives me pause to say, well,

(01:41:03):
now kind of looks like they are viewing him more accurately.

Speaker 8 (01:41:06):
But then how come he's so far behind Justin Herbert and.

Speaker 6 (01:41:11):
I think that you know the guy in between that
we're talking about, Dak Prescott. How many of these guys
have a CD lamb. It took us this long to
get to ced Lamb. Wow, that was awesome. Yeah, because
he didn't get hurt.

Speaker 7 (01:41:25):
I meanely don't want him to get hurt. But you
can't be there, pal, Yeah, you don't belong here. He
was if you missed it, he was standing in the
cowboy restricted area. You're on the sidelines and you veer
onto the field or veer into the white painted area.
That's humongous and it's not for you, it's for the officials.
And he was standing there, cheering on a pass on
its way there, and he just absolutely got trucked by

(01:41:47):
the official his head snapped back, total whiplash type of hit,
but he appeared to be fine afterwards.

Speaker 8 (01:41:53):
And obviously they had to penalize the Cowboys because you're
not allowed.

Speaker 11 (01:41:55):
To do that.

Speaker 8 (01:41:56):
It was stupid.

Speaker 7 (01:41:56):
Yeah, no, he has not had CD Lamb, and now
Dak Prescott has Ceedee Lamb and George Pickens like retaining
his status as Tier two for Dak, that's not good enough.

Speaker 6 (01:42:09):
But the funny thing about this is what if we
talk about all offseason and I realized they got Pickens
and that Ceedee Lamb is there and there's no reason
to believe that he's not healthy going into the season.

Speaker 8 (01:42:20):
They're still.

Speaker 6 (01:42:22):
Far behind the other two teams in the division that
I think are You know? How about this those top
fourteen quarterbacks.

Speaker 7 (01:42:29):
Quarterback that's likeliest to miss the playoffs on the top fourteen,
you can guess brock Purty because their team was bad
last year, but he and Dak Prescott far and away
if the top two names on that list.

Speaker 8 (01:42:41):
Yep, yep. Because of the way everything shakes out.

Speaker 6 (01:42:44):
And I mean, so you're having to win a wild
card if you're the Cowboys essentially, provided you know Jayden
Daniels doesn't have a sophomore slump because you know that's coming.

Speaker 8 (01:42:55):
Yeah, they're not gonna win the division. They're not gonna
have play both of those teams. That's what I'm saying.

Speaker 7 (01:42:58):
So now, yeah, they're not as good them, and Dak
can't do anything about that. Dak could have the season
he's had very good regular season, is not as good
as them, and I think head up they'll be. It'd
be nice to win one of those four games. It'd
be great to win two. I don't think they're gonna
win three of those head up games. And just keep
this in mind as we talk about CJ and evaluate CJ.
Did we mention any other AFC South quarterbacks yet? I

(01:43:19):
didn't think so, because they.

Speaker 8 (01:43:21):
Stink they do.

Speaker 6 (01:43:23):
The only, maybe the only surprise left as we go
to break is that Aaron Rodgers actually somehow made the
third tier and he's not in the fourth tier. But
we can probably circle back to this before the end
of the show. In the meantime, we've got the good,
the bad, and the ugly from over the weekend. We
do it every Monday at this time, and we'll do
it again next.

Speaker 3 (01:43:43):
The A team on Sports Talk seven ninety.

Speaker 1 (01:43:48):
Now the good, oh good, the bad, that's not good,
and the ugly don't make me good?

Speaker 3 (01:43:55):
With the A team were still win you the good,
the bad.

Speaker 7 (01:44:00):
We've been listening over the course the first two and
a half hours of the show. You know there's plenty
of good to discuss today as we enter our signature
segment here on a Monday edition to the eighteen that
means four point thirty. We talk about the good, the bad,
and the ugly. There's always something for everybody.

Speaker 6 (01:44:16):
Cold with the.

Speaker 7 (01:44:16):
Ugly, ac with the bad, I have the good, and
it really was kind of across the board. Good to
go to New York and get two wins. Good to
back a series up that you just won with a
second series in a row that you won, to give
yourself a little bit of a momentum hopefully into this
home stand where they need to start doing what they
did throughout the bulk of their home season, winning three
out of every four games, so they get back to that.

(01:44:37):
Should have no problem holding off the Mariners, even though
they're just a half game back. But a happy flight
back to Houston day after Carlos Korea and the Astros
manhandle the Yankees got another great start that's good, definitely,
but I still had in mind that the good was
getting in and out of a preseason game without any
significant negative plays, negative things which obviously are in injuries.

(01:45:00):
And unfortunately it changes just two days later with what
happened with Brevin Jordan over at practice today. No definitive
word on that, obviously, just moments after it happened. Debiko
Ryans clearly addressed it after practice. You didn't hear earlier
those out of practice. I was here working rather than
at practice inside the Texans bubble, went up to try

(01:45:21):
to make a play on the ball and went down
with some sort of lower leg injury and was extremely distraught.
He's a player who last year and he didn't even
realize it when he did it. He told us this
offseason he still doesn't know when he did it towards
acl which cost him almost the entire season. Put in
the work to get back. It was a very fast
and successful recovery, and he had talked about it. Dalton

(01:45:44):
Schultz was just talking about how fast he looks, how
good he looks, and he obviously played in the game
on Saturday and did what they hoped he would be
able to do. Looked every bit the player he was before.
He's been splitting first team reps in different packages with
Dalton Schultz, with Cade Stover. Super emotional when he was
down on the field, and definitely impactful to the rest

(01:46:05):
of his teammates. With an injury like this that happened
to practice today, Dimiko Ryans, I'll play it for you
here said this about the injury with Brevin Jordan practiced.

Speaker 10 (01:46:15):
Guys here, we saw Brevin go down with inury. Will
continue to evaluate Bred and see you know where he is.
It's tough for everybody to see Brevan going down, knowing
how much work he's putting in to get back to
this point of playing football, and how excited he was
to get back playing football. So just praying for him
to have a successful return.

Speaker 7 (01:46:35):
As what happened with CJ. Gardner Johnson. Sometimes the assumption
is its worst case. Maybe it isn't didn't see it,
really don't have any input beyond that, and hopefully in
the coming days and really personally for the player, hopefully
this is something he can overcome either quickly this season
or just period make his way back to the field.

(01:46:56):
Somebody that they see and I both thought would be
instrumental in the new offense. With Nick Keyley and his
history with tight ends, they're going to need assistance at
that position to be sure, even drafting one, which they
did with Luke Lache, even adding Dalton Keene in the
last handful of days, something else likely will need to
be done.

Speaker 8 (01:47:16):
At the position.

Speaker 7 (01:47:16):
If this is an extended absence for Brevin Jordan and
that's the good.

Speaker 6 (01:47:21):
Well, sorry, I was about to say, I that was
my bad. Actually, I didn't know you were going to
do all that.

Speaker 7 (01:47:26):
Well, I think combining it might have been the better
way to do it, because it doesn't seem very good
when you I just had to, you know, tell everybody.

Speaker 8 (01:47:33):
And yeah, you're right, I did.

Speaker 6 (01:47:35):
I went out of my way last week to talk
about how I thought maybe he would sneak up on
some of us. I am fascinated to see if it's
the same leg, whatever the injury is, if it's the
same leg as his acl last year. That's why you
know the reports that he was screaming, know that kind
of stuff. That's that's Tyrese Halliburton. That's knowing, in my opinion,

(01:47:57):
how bad it is and in his case, how far
you and how hard you work to just get back
to this point and then to have this happen. It's
obviously the most cruel part of any athlete's career, potentially
definitely in such a situation like this where he was
just coming off an injury that was catastrophic and took
so much time to get himself back. I hate to

(01:48:19):
say that this is just one of those types of
players that's it's prevalent or it's it's more prone to
this happening.

Speaker 8 (01:48:28):
But sometimes that is the case.

Speaker 6 (01:48:29):
In the NFL saw it with Charles Spencer, for example,
a guy who had all the promise in the world
as an offensive lineman and just could not stay healthy.

Speaker 8 (01:48:37):
It was just a catastrophic injury after another.

Speaker 7 (01:48:39):
It just seemed like he had an injury, it was catastrophic,
and he just never returned to the player.

Speaker 6 (01:48:43):
He didn't have two though, like not made necessarily in
this type of timeline, but it was like pretty close
succession and then just was like who was the Fedorowitz
had the concussion issue and he was just like, I'm
hanging it up, I'm not doing this.

Speaker 8 (01:48:57):
That's different though, definitely the case.

Speaker 7 (01:48:58):
Jordan had thirteen all offensive snaps, three special team snaps
was targeted twice, caught both balls, and everything about watching
him play during camp and watching him play on Saturday,
he was definitely back and hopefully not too far back
now following what took place at practice today.

Speaker 8 (01:49:16):
Well, that leaves us with the ugly cool what.

Speaker 19 (01:49:18):
Do you want to go with anything from college football
rankings to what's going on with of course the Texans
the Astros I got one. Remember when they drafted a
second round pick out of the University of Notre Dame
to be the long term answer at right tackle. Yeah,
that ship sailed Blake Fisher this past weekend. About as

(01:49:42):
ugly as the performance as you can get when it
comes to playing on the offensive line at right tackle.
Not only did I say this, but are friends over
a Pro Football focused at this great out with the
twenty seven point one overall metric and his twenty nine
point three great in pass blocking was the second lowest
of all active NFL players this weekend.

Speaker 8 (01:50:04):
Who was the worst.

Speaker 19 (01:50:05):
The only thing worse his run blocking grade of twenty
seven point three, the lowest individual grade given out by
anyone who played more than a dozen reps this past weekend.
Gave up three pressures two sacks, including one on a
crucial third down against Keaton. Slovas was getting bullied by
two defensive linemen who may or may not be on

(01:50:28):
the active roster for the Minnesota Vikings come Week one.

Speaker 6 (01:50:31):
All right, look, I'm not this is very very early.
We're one preseason game in. But if this is going
the way of Kenyon Green, eventually you've got a problem this.

Speaker 8 (01:50:42):
You have one already.

Speaker 6 (01:50:43):
I was paying nice. We don't need this to see
this because we saw him play. He was playing against
mostly his backups.

Speaker 7 (01:50:51):
He obviously was not obviously he was among the starting
group to begin the game, with Ursery over at left
tackle and many of the other projected starters resting Andrews
at center. But the other three spots essentially were the
Texans second unit, Blake Fisher among them. Unlike Andrews and Ersery,
who after the opening drive of the game that resulted
in the only Texans touchdown of the game, they stepped

(01:51:12):
off the field their work for the day was done.
The remaining second teamers, Fisher included, stayed out there for
another twenty three snaps. He played fifty nine percent of
the Texans offensive snaps at the right tackle position. Cole
just laid out the statistical analysis from PFF about his performance,
and if you watch the game you could see it
in real time. There are a lot of being pushed around,

(01:51:32):
a lot of moves that were made by d Lineman
that had him completely beaten.

Speaker 8 (01:51:37):
And they need Trent Brown to.

Speaker 7 (01:51:40):
Get off the pup list and practice because that's his spot,
and Blake Fisher would then no longer be needed this year.
I don't believe than he cam Robinson at least to
be healthy, but seeing tay Ersrie pass him and I
think that may be permanent. And I think Titus Howard's
moved to right tackle with the starters again for the
billionth time, in Titus Howard's career is again permanent.

Speaker 8 (01:51:58):
What a team guy. Unbelievably.

Speaker 7 (01:52:00):
Yeah, I mean, Blake Fisher is as sad as it
is just one preseason game and all of camp we've
talked about this similarly.

Speaker 8 (01:52:06):
It was not a particularly good showing for him.

Speaker 7 (01:52:08):
We'll have another opportunity next Thursday against the Panthers reserves.
We'll see how he performs then.

Speaker 3 (01:52:16):
The A on Sports Talk seven ninety.

Speaker 6 (01:52:26):
We are going to hear from Alex Bregman, very very shortly.
But first we're gonna make good on something we promised
earlier in the show. We had to kind of move
things around. Steve Sparks making his weekly visit to the station,
and obviously after a weekend in which the Astros took
two out of three in the Bronx over the Yankees,

(01:52:46):
and with everything going on with the division race with
the Mariners and how they just refuse to lose lately,
one of the first things that Sparky was asked about
was whether or not this Astros team plays better when
it's in a tight Divisi race.

Speaker 18 (01:53:02):
Of it as a player, The only drawback I think
Sean would be, this is fresh on my mind just
because the way we saw a Bray. You come into
that game yesterday going ninety four ninety five miles per hour,
and you're going, man, what's going on? Pretty big moment,
close game, and then he finishes up with three pitches
ninety eight, ninety eight, ninety nine, So you're thinking he's

(01:53:26):
trying to tit too into this game? Is there ten
to nineties? I mean, what is going on? So I
think there's some releaders that would definitely love to have
a little bit of some breathing room so they could
get some rest, but that's just not going to be
the nature of this race this year. I mean, very
similar to last year with the Mariners nipping at their heels.
But I think it's going to go down the end.

(01:53:47):
I think Seattle is really good and I think the
Astros are very good too, so I think it's going
to be a really, really fun race. I don't want
to discount the Rangers, and they might be able to
get on a run too, but this is going to
be a fun rate and I love that, and I
think you're right. It does keep them on point and now,
and you guys have probably talked about this this morning.

(01:54:10):
Correy is a difference in moments like this because he
keeps everybody on point. There's no mental lapses with Carlos
Carray out there. He keeps everybody alert, he keeps everybody energized,
and I think he's re energized too. I think I
don't think they could have gotten anybody better at this
point in time that their franchise than to get Carlos

(01:54:31):
Carey back in the fold.

Speaker 2 (01:54:32):
Yeah, Steve, with that, there's a big part of me.
Now there may be somebody with better numbers across the league.
Since the All Star breakdown was trade there was traded, right,
I get that. I'm talking about the I'm talking about
the whole umbrella over the entire player in impact on
their new team, which is his old team but new team.
There can't be a guy who and he's performing on

(01:54:54):
the field as well. There can't be a more valuable
pick up at this point time, considering the circumstances with
a bunch of injuries they're trying to get healthy.

Speaker 3 (01:55:04):
Then Carlos Korea to this team.

Speaker 18 (01:55:06):
Joy Sean, He's so happy.

Speaker 5 (01:55:08):
Think about it.

Speaker 18 (01:55:08):
I mean, his parents live in Houston, his wife's parents
live in Houston. He still has a house in Houston
to be able to come home and be with some
of these lifelong friends. Guys he played with Josh Hater.
I mean, I know he's gone all over the place,
but those two were teammate in a couple of different
spots in the mind leagues. There's a lot of close

(01:55:28):
friendships on this team in Korea is a big part
of this. But when you watch the games, and I
know they probably talked about on the television broadcast too.
He goes up to the mound and the catcher's there,
and then all three of the other infielders there. He's
like a magnet. Everybody wants to hear what he has
to say in a conference between a pitcher and a catcher.
So he I mean, there's a lot of validity to

(01:55:51):
what he says and does, and he's going to keep
everybody on their toes and I love it. I think
they needed it, they needed an extra leader.

Speaker 5 (01:56:00):
And I remember what Joe a.

Speaker 18 (01:56:01):
Spotta was talking about. You know, we were at Fenway
and we were listening to Joe and one of the
things he said was Carlinos just kept talk or calling me,
and he wanted to know about Christian Walker.

Speaker 5 (01:56:13):
He wanted to know.

Speaker 18 (01:56:14):
About so and so and so and that. He wanted
to know what made guys click, and he wanted to
be the best teammate he could for all of these
guys as soon as he stepped in the door, and
he asked. But he wanted all that information just about
the personalities of his new teammates.

Speaker 8 (01:56:31):
What did we see different from Brian King yesterday? Because
the previous outings had not looked like what yesterdays?

Speaker 18 (01:56:36):
Did you know what? I asked the pitching coach. Last
night we were on the plane. I just said, hey,
did Brian race his arm angle a little bit? Looked
to me like he had got his hand up a
little bit higher on his release. He said, well, if
you saw.

Speaker 15 (01:56:50):
It, I trust that.

Speaker 5 (01:56:51):
I don't know.

Speaker 18 (01:56:51):
We didn't talk about it specifically because he had just
pitched the day before, so he didn't, you know, have
any conversations with it about it. Most likely he probably
watched the video it probably noticed that his arm had
dropped a little bit. He was getting underneath some of
his pitches and they were flattening out. Yesterday, I thought
he got it up a little bit higher, maybe two
or three inches, and he had that great deception back.
So I think that was a little correction he.

Speaker 1 (01:57:13):
Was able to make.

Speaker 18 (01:57:14):
And they're going to k need him down the stretch.
They're going to need everybody down the stretch, and I
think that was a nice, little subtle adjustment he made.
And he looked great striking out the side.

Speaker 8 (01:57:24):
Sparky you mentioned Fromer. Are we in skip of start
territory with them with his last two outings.

Speaker 18 (01:57:29):
I don't think they can afford that, Dan, And you
know you need fromber to get out there and do
his thing, you know, velocity wise, there was nothing wrong,
So I don't think there's any alert as far as
like a tired arm. I just think, you know, he
couldn't land his curveball for a strike his last game.
Just never got a feel and kind of back to
what I was saying about Brian King, maybe just watch

(01:57:50):
a little bit of video, make a simple correction this
time of year, and he's been one of those guys
who's been able to roll out of bed and so
that that curveball for a strike just about any time
he wants. That last game, he gets the Yankees pretty
odd in that sense that he wasn't able to throw
up for strikes only one slinging myths on his curve ball.
I think that entire outing. So once you get that ironbackap,

(01:58:10):
I think we'll see him, you know, rattle off a
lot of a lot more good starts to finish this thing.

Speaker 7 (01:58:15):
Didn't expect to hear that an interesting answer from Sparks. Uh,
you know, the ace of your staff when you have
no other starters. I don't don't think the Astros are
intending to skip a start with the from bra Valdez.
It's not like they didn't have a chance to win
the game he started. It's thattn't been to blow up starter.
I just he's the ace of your staff. I just

(01:58:36):
odd thing to I hope the Astros aren't considering that. Well,
the first inning was not a lot to write home about.

Speaker 18 (01:58:45):
He just.

Speaker 6 (01:58:48):
I we've argued at nauseum about this in the past.
What you can tell when he's going to have one
of those type of games where it's just the pitch
cowt the and it's not even like the fielding stuff
that he gets unlucky with, like like it was for
I guess it was Hunter Brown in the Hunter Brown

(01:59:09):
the Boston series.

Speaker 8 (01:59:10):
I can't remember which, but I don't know. Like, he's
so good when he's good.

Speaker 6 (01:59:16):
This is gonna sound like a cop out, but he's
so good when he's good that you take it for granted,
and it maybe it makes it more glaringly noticeable when
he isn't sharp, like he wasn't in the first inning
on Saturday. Does that make sense?

Speaker 7 (01:59:29):
Well, I don't know how you preface that comment, but
you're exactly right. You're exactly right.

Speaker 6 (01:59:34):
He's so good when he's good, and he I think
it was pretty clear, and I'm not sure you know
where everybody consumed the game and what was all said
about it, whether it's the opponent's broadcast crew or the
ones that we have here on radio and TV, But
it seemed pretty obvious he was trying to get through
the game without his best stuff, which for him is
pretty rare because he's awesome.

Speaker 7 (01:59:55):
He did not have the sharp break on his curve ball.
He wasn't using it to say, sweet, two strikes, you're
done because he wasn't landing it. It didn't have the
sharpness to it. It certainly wasn't as effective, so it
meant he began to throw it less. He obviously had
a difficulty finding the strike zone. But I was watching
it all unfold even after a first inning. It could
have been five to nothing after the first inning, and

(02:00:17):
it probably would have been if Robber was.

Speaker 8 (02:00:18):
Not the starting pitcher.

Speaker 7 (02:00:19):
He got into all that trouble and then he got
right back out of it like he always does, even
though two runs scored and it was not a strong day.
And then the last thought I had before he ultimately
gave up the four runs, is this is the exact
same start results wise that Hunter Brown just gave the Astros.
Hunter just was dominant for five innings and couldn't get
out of the sixth. Fromber was awful for five innings,

(02:00:40):
but there were still only two runs on the board.
Then he literally couldn't get out of the six without
giving up two more. So now it looks and really
was a whole lot worse than Brown. Four runs allowed
in five and two thirds is not befitting of an ACE,
and ten runs allowed and back to back starts also
not befitting of an ACE. Three runs allowed and three
straight starts before that, Yeah, that's an ACE. You won't
pitch this series against the Red Sox.

Speaker 1 (02:01:04):
The A team on Sports Talk seven ninety Adam Clinton
and Adam Wexler are the A team.

Speaker 8 (02:01:22):
Football at five soul.

Speaker 6 (02:01:24):
As per usual, we will tell you that the Astros
have recalled Jacob Melton. That's a corresponding move for the
Christian Javier forty man roster spot and the designation of
Cooper Hummel. Just throwing that out there because the Astros
made it official. But we I think a couple of

(02:01:45):
weeks ago, it might have been last week, we were
talking about the coach's poll for UT and you mentioned
at the time, I think they had never been AP
top or AP number one overall to start the season.

Speaker 7 (02:01:57):
Coaches Poll two different polls, and they actually have not
been top of either one.

Speaker 6 (02:02:02):
I to ask what everybody said today, and we knew
that last week. I do, so that's why I was
getting confused. So both of these are first times and
they're both happening this year, which makes sense.

Speaker 7 (02:02:13):
Yeah, not much difference between the two, but today are
in the decision making of those that voted Coach's Poll
last week, AP the Writer's Poll this week, and Texas
is number one. There are a lot of people who
are unsure of exactly who the best team in the
country is, as evidence by how the voting played out
in both polls, and since the AP is the one

(02:02:33):
that was released today, there are plenty of teams catching
a lot of respect this year at the number one spot.
The possibility that you know all the way down the list,
that this is the best team in the country. Texas
is the number one team in the country, and the
AP poll they received twenty five first place votes, less
than half of the first place votes went to Texas,

(02:02:54):
only two more first place votes than Penn State, who
is just five overall points behind them two, so it's
one versus three according to AP because that's where Ohio
State is. When the Longhorns at the end of the
month go up to Columbus to take on Ohio State,
eleven voters think Ohio State is the best team in
the country, four more say it's Clemson, another one says

(02:03:15):
that it is Georgia because it just means more, and
another one says it's Oregon. Oregon seventh, and Notre Dame
comes in at sixth despite nobody thinking Notre Dame is
the best team in the country. That's six different teams
that at least one voter said that's the best team
in the country. Sixty five voters, six different teams at

(02:03:38):
least got one voter to say, yeah, you're the best
team in the country that lines up to hopefully make
for a great college football season. All six of those teams,
I would guess, and I feel pretty comfortable saying it today,
knowing how the playoffs work. Even though Oregon's quarterback plays
for Cleveland now, Georgia's quarterback plays for Miami now in

(02:04:01):
college football, Clemson's quarterback is actually returning and is very
very what a concepts. Ohio State probably will name a
starting quarterback before they play against Texas, but they have
not done so yet. Penn State's quarterback, like Clemsons, is
returning and is highly thought of and is coming off
of a very good college football season. And Texas quarterback
is the full time starter for the first time in

(02:04:22):
his career. So a lot of things could happen and
seasons could be derailed. But I'll just go out on
a very strong limb and say the six teams that
got first place votes will be a part of the
postseason playoff picture.

Speaker 8 (02:04:38):
Chalky of you, I think that's reasonable.

Speaker 7 (02:04:40):
Now, Alabama and LSU a true other SEC teams that
land inside the top ten Miami where Carson Beck is.
The other team that's inside the top ten Arizona State
that was part of the postseason a year ago and
played quite well, a highest ranked Big twelve team. They
come in at number eleven, Michigan's at number fourteen, SMUs

(02:05:01):
at number sixteen. The Sooners and Aggie's are also inside
the top twenty. Oklahoma at eighteen, Texas A and m
at nineteen, Texas Tech number twenty three.

Speaker 6 (02:05:13):
So they wrote an article about this on ESPN, and
they gave each team a stat to know, and for
the Longhorns, it said the number twenty six, as in,
their twenty six turnovers last season were the fifth most
in the FBS, yet they still had a plus five
turnover margin thanks to their thirty one takeaways, which were

(02:05:36):
second in the country. First of all, that last part
is mind blowing to me that they could have that
many and still be plus five. But secondly, do you
anticipate that number actually going up this year? With who's
quarterbacking the team? You act like it's gonna go significantly down. No,
I just don't expect it to go I think you know.

Speaker 7 (02:05:56):
Some of it is they're playing in a presumable there
should be several games, especially early after Ohia's date. This
should be playing from a position where what do you
you should have zero turnovers one turnover over a three
week stretch and so that help will help. And then
when you get into the meat of your schedule after that.
I don't see any reason why Arch is going to
throw the ball to the other team that much more.

(02:06:17):
I mean, I think he's a he will be considered
a much bigger risk taker. But because they will make
more plays because of it than Quinn yours. And man,
if you thought Quinn Ewers had questionable pocket presence last year,
I hope you didn't watch his game yesterday with the Dolphins.

Speaker 8 (02:06:33):
Oh, nothing's changed.

Speaker 7 (02:06:35):
Well, just some of the things he does in the pocket.
I'm like, man, like, what are you doing? You're you've
played this position before, and I'm well, I can't believe
what I'm seeing.

Speaker 8 (02:06:43):
He's no Colt McCoy. Did he retire yet?

Speaker 7 (02:06:46):
He's officially retired last week. I mean, he's kind of
been in the media game now for a year or two,
just doing things that got podcast and whatnot.

Speaker 8 (02:06:55):
You talk about some coach on the NFL level.

Speaker 6 (02:06:58):
Good for him. He's round. Did he play for all
thirty two teams?

Speaker 8 (02:07:02):
He didn't bounce around quite that much? It feels like it.

Speaker 6 (02:07:06):
Also, they're playing Ohio State at noon. I know I've
asked you this a million times. Who's the primetime game
in Week one? It's eleven o'clock our time. Yeah, but
you know who is the primetime matchup that night? I
could have looked this up, but I figured I would
just let you do it because you're faster.

Speaker 7 (02:07:24):
Yes, there's probably that weekend four games that are head
and shoulders above the rest. Saturday, not just the weekend,
but Saturday specifically, and I do think they've laid them
out really nicely to have Bama and Florida State would
be the game in the afternoon. In Florida State, I
hope is up for it. They're two touchdown underdogs, but

(02:07:45):
the name value, I think we'll have plenty of.

Speaker 8 (02:07:47):
People tuning in the evening game. And we've talked about
it before.

Speaker 7 (02:07:51):
Some would even argue it's a better matchup because of
who's playing quarterback for these two teams than Texas and
Ohio State. You have extremely accomplished longtime college football starter
Garrett Nasmayer of LSU at very established Kdklubnick of Clemson.

Speaker 8 (02:08:05):
That is the six to thirty game. That is the
game that is put in primetime.

Speaker 7 (02:08:09):
And the only reason the Longhorn Game isn't in that
spot is basically because of the network that has it.
They're big game they put on at that time all
the time, and that's because of the contract they have
with the Big Ten. That's where they they want their
big game at that time. So LSU Clemson would be
considered the game you're you're asking about.

Speaker 6 (02:08:24):
Even at eleven am Central, like you were saying, that's
going to be brutal even in Ohio state as opposed
to down here in Tech Texas, it would be.

Speaker 8 (02:08:33):
Brutal from a just a heat.

Speaker 7 (02:08:36):
I'm think the heat in Columbus at eleven am on
August thirtieth is going to be brutal.

Speaker 6 (02:08:40):
I'm thinking it would be a lot more brutal down
here having been an Austin. Clearly, we got in the
car and I know, like sometimes those the the thermometer
on the car, you know, it's not what it really
is because the car has been sitting there right, but
it said one oh seven.

Speaker 8 (02:08:55):
Nice here you are. It didn't go down that much
on my way out of ten and this is like
four thirty.

Speaker 6 (02:09:01):
It just made me think of that because because like
I know, they've played a season opener in the middle
of the day in August in Austin.

Speaker 7 (02:09:10):
But I believe each of these subsequent games over the
next three weeks for the long Horns, which are all
at home, will all be hotter than.

Speaker 8 (02:09:16):
The all month.

Speaker 6 (02:09:17):
Gosh, so they a three straight in DKR yep, wow,
godspeed Long Horns.

Speaker 7 (02:09:24):
If they can get by San Jose State, UTEP and
Sam Houston. Then then all will be well.

Speaker 6 (02:09:29):
So either mcconnie's gonna wear the leather jacket with no
shirt or he will just lose the leather jacket for
the first handful of home games if he's down there
on the sideline.

Speaker 7 (02:09:38):
Yeah, there's there's no leather jacket. Even the last of
those games is a night game. I don't I don't
think he'll be leather jacketing it up. But they don't
play at DKR after that game until November.

Speaker 8 (02:09:47):
First, they go from what date until then the twentieth
of next month, September twentieth until November in October this
year at all, Well, the OHU game is in that
four game period.

Speaker 6 (02:10:00):
Okay, I got you. Well, yeah, obviously, but still that's brutal.
It's perfectly fine. No, I don't think it is, and
I want to I want to find about.

Speaker 7 (02:10:08):
Their road games after Florida are at Kentucky and Mississippi
State arguably the worst two teams in the conferences.

Speaker 8 (02:10:17):
That's not Thanks thanks for confirming.

Speaker 6 (02:10:20):
Yeah, did you by the way, did you see the
social media posts for Kentucky?

Speaker 7 (02:10:24):
But what was it regarding I don't I was sent this.
It just means more if you're not at Kentucky. No, No,
it just means more if it's basketball season.

Speaker 6 (02:10:35):
You know what, there's no way able to do this.

Speaker 8 (02:10:37):
Didn't they have taken Mark stoops for real?

Speaker 6 (02:10:39):
Actually some of these are better than what I saw.
It was just interesting Kentucky football. I mean, I have
the Internet. I can figure it out. I'm I'm second
guessing my decision to even bring it up.

Speaker 7 (02:10:51):
Well now I'm going to for sure, yes, But what
was it about? Because there could be a lot of
things that I shoke fun at.

Speaker 8 (02:10:57):
It was the photo shoot. That's the best way to
just sum it up. Of their players or their NFL players,
call those what I'm getting at. I know exactly.

Speaker 6 (02:11:05):
I'm trying to think about how to do this.

Speaker 8 (02:11:06):
Gingerly. My tweet went viral. Ford on SECO. What did
you say? Just this is the state of Kentucky football
and everyone ran with it. It's not good. It looks
like they're jumping rope together.

Speaker 7 (02:11:21):
Holding hands, Okay, bonding football. Texas just went to the Greenbrier,
same thing.

Speaker 6 (02:11:26):
You know, Cole, He's got a point because when we're
watching the NCAA tournament, all those guys on the bench
are always locking arms.

Speaker 7 (02:11:33):
Yeah, the team from Colgate and Saint Mary Pulgate. What
a great name of a school, that's that's great content.

Speaker 6 (02:11:40):
Guys.

Speaker 19 (02:11:41):
Do you also know that when you're playing football, you
don't jump in the air and square like little school roles?

Speaker 8 (02:11:44):
Because that's what they were doing. No, I didn't see anything.
Wait there was video to prove this, or you just
you know, look at their faces. Look at the way
the legs are positioned. That is hot holding.

Speaker 6 (02:11:54):
You have to remember that when they took that picture
there was a photographer telling them.

Speaker 5 (02:11:59):
What to do.

Speaker 8 (02:12:00):
Then he should be fired as a photographers. Don't disagree.
It's not the way I would have gone.

Speaker 6 (02:12:06):
It does not portray intimidation when you go to play
Kentucky specially. Do you think the Longhorn saw that picture
and thought, who, maybe this road trip's gonna be a little.

Speaker 7 (02:12:18):
Bit so far down the season. I hope they're not
already looking past.

Speaker 6 (02:12:21):
They circled the day.

Speaker 8 (02:12:22):
Take it a step further.

Speaker 19 (02:12:24):
Toledo got more actual votes for a AP top twenty
five ranking, and they're the underdogs going to Lexington.

Speaker 8 (02:12:30):
You think Toledo is afraid of them? I don't think so.

Speaker 6 (02:12:33):
Not after this photo shoot all of it all right,
that's football at five. I didn't think we'd be going
all those places, but we did. We will come right
back and you'll hear from Alex Bregman when we return
the eight on Sports Talk seven ninety. That sure is true, Rex,

(02:12:59):
I'll tell you that much. It is the A team
Sports Talk seven ninety. It is a Monday edition of
the program kind of going through all the things that
happened over the weekend and then getting you ready for
Astros and Red Sox later on tonight. Not only is
it the re debut, can you that is that accurate?

(02:13:21):
Can you say that redebut of Carlos.

Speaker 8 (02:13:24):
Care say whatever you want? Well, what would you phrase
it as his return?

Speaker 6 (02:13:28):
That's too boring? So the re debut of Carlos Korea
and it is the debut of Carlos Korea in City
Connect gear. These are not beginning enough attention this year.
Maybe they're not winning as much as they used to
at home, and that's why I don't know. These are sick.
You know we're in the logo today. These jerseys are fantastic.
Kara is going to look amazing in them. And it's
also the return of Alex Bregman. And obviously he caught

(02:13:51):
up with a lot of the Houston media in Boston
last week, but he had some very interesting things to
say about returning home, because that's fit. So that's what
it is, including the first place he stopped as soon
as he got off the airplane.

Speaker 8 (02:14:10):
Yeah, Bregman, ready for us here, Pally.

Speaker 5 (02:14:15):
Good.

Speaker 20 (02:14:17):
What does it feel like you've been on the other
side where you've seen old teammates returning to s Walmart?

Speaker 13 (02:14:21):
What you feel like to to walk in here today?
It feels great to be back.

Speaker 20 (02:14:26):
We landed yesterday last night immediately went to Waaburger, so
get back in Texas swing of things.

Speaker 13 (02:14:36):
But it's it's awesome. It's great to be back here.
So many great memories, so much love for the people
here in Houston.

Speaker 5 (02:14:45):
Bore the fans.

Speaker 20 (02:14:46):
Uh, my teammates that coaches, this entire organization at just
an amazing time here. I'll be forever grateful to the
Astros organization. And it's Uh, it's great to be.

Speaker 13 (02:15:00):
Back, Alex.

Speaker 8 (02:15:01):
What do you think about the interesting timing of you
playing your first game since leaving here the same day
that Carlos, which makes his return him in a partner.

Speaker 13 (02:15:09):
Super cool obviously.

Speaker 20 (02:15:12):
Because it was shocked at the news during the trade deadline,
and it was awesome and it looks like he's fit
right back in.

Speaker 13 (02:15:19):
He's a great player, a leader, great teammates.

Speaker 20 (02:15:23):
So it's it's always difficult to compete against him because
he's such a good competitor.

Speaker 13 (02:15:29):
But we're gonna give it our best shot today.

Speaker 14 (02:15:32):
How would you expect to be kind of an emotional
moment when you get your welcome back here man, because
we love runs neat for you in this city and
I know you know that.

Speaker 13 (02:15:38):
Yeah, for sure, I'm just kind of like what I
said before, It's just, uh, had such.

Speaker 20 (02:15:44):
A great time here, so many great people here in Houston,
so many amazing memories. Uh, it's gonna be it's gonna
be really supsful to be back here and playing a
game here again. Just looking forward to I've been looking
forward to it for a while. Obviously, two really good

(02:16:04):
teams competing today and just uh, yeah, it's a It's
it's a special day for sure.

Speaker 10 (02:16:13):
Is that sort of help you kind of got to
see the guys and now you get to enjoy at
this moment.

Speaker 20 (02:16:17):
Yeah, for sure, got to talk to a lot of
the guys. I mean we stay in touch without the
year regardless, but getting to.

Speaker 13 (02:16:25):
See them and walking down today and seeing Carl, some
of the.

Speaker 20 (02:16:29):
Guys at the clubhouse staff and security guys, some of
the guys.

Speaker 13 (02:16:34):
Have worked in the kitchen. Just it's been great. It's
been great to see some uh some old friends here.
And yeah, it's a special place for me. My family
started my family here. My sister still lives here, my
mother in law and father in law still live here.
Are our Knox was born here.

Speaker 5 (02:16:53):
So we we love it.

Speaker 13 (02:16:56):
We love Houston, we love the people here, and it's
good to be back.

Speaker 10 (02:16:59):
To want to turn into the home clubhouse, like did
you have to think through where you're going?

Speaker 13 (02:17:04):
Blugged by it on the way in, plugged by it
with a few of the few mal teammates on the
way in and found them found the.

Speaker 5 (02:17:10):
Way over here.

Speaker 20 (02:17:11):
But I mean, really nice job over here on the
physitics side, it's nice in there.

Speaker 6 (02:17:17):
There's no way that Alex Bregman by way of Albuquerque,
New Mexico, LSU and Houston has developed a New England
accent right that is correct like Craig's trying to text
and force I did not hear one.

Speaker 8 (02:17:34):
Where did you say he's playing the night they can park?
He did not say that. Why to bag off the
plane when you suggested he mentioned where they went?

Speaker 7 (02:17:44):
Alex had just prior to what you heard and said,
we landed last night, immediately went to Waterburger to get
back into the Texas swing of things. And then it
was later determined by reporters like Chandler, who said he
ordered at number three.

Speaker 8 (02:17:56):
He got his order. Yeah, do you think Bregman is
an un?

Speaker 6 (02:18:00):
That's a triple meat waterburger by the way, Well, of
course now I want that on the way home large dp.

Speaker 11 (02:18:06):
Uh is?

Speaker 6 (02:18:07):
But is do you think he's an onions guy or not? Uh?

Speaker 7 (02:18:10):
Well, apparently he's not a tomatoes guy. And if he
only said no tomatoes, then it probably means he was
down for having the onions on it.

Speaker 8 (02:18:18):
When did you find out he was not tomatoes guy?

Speaker 7 (02:18:20):
He ordered a number three parentheses, a triple meat waterburger
with no tomatoes, A large doctor pepper that was in
its tweet.

Speaker 8 (02:18:26):
Chandler roam noting that, Gosh, Chandler is just.

Speaker 6 (02:18:29):
The best, isn't he? I agree?

Speaker 8 (02:18:32):
You know what we should have him on the show
every week.

Speaker 3 (02:18:34):
We should.

Speaker 7 (02:18:35):
We had him on last week and we will do
so again this week in advance of their game against
the Orioles. That's way off in the distance Astros and
Red Sox. Obviously, both of these teams, if you're unaware,
standings wise, have a lot to play for. Red Sox
still are well within striking distance of a division championship,
but much more likely they are. You know, they're trying

(02:18:56):
to play themselves into the postseason. The whole reason they
got Alex Bregman. To me, they also did something else
this offseason, and down here we don't talk about it much.
I think every other American League city does. The pitcher
that's leading the American League in wins era, innings pitched
era plus.

Speaker 8 (02:19:15):
The Real Cy Young Awards added him.

Speaker 7 (02:19:18):
This past offseason and he's been unbelievable and he pitches tonight.
It's great that Christian Er is returning to the Astros,
but Garrett Crochet is just continuing what is light. I mean,
he's been a very good pitcher from the moment he
left became a major league player, and he had a
super fast path to the majors only season he wasn't good.

(02:19:40):
Was twenty twenty two he didn't play, he was hurt.
He's been pretty good. He was a pretty good pitcher
for the White Sox. He was an ace for them
and borderline ace overall, and he's just unbelievable this year.
He is, along with Tark schoobl for the pitchers who
have answered the ball. I answered the call by taking
the ball every game essentially all year. Of the two
best pitchers in the American League this year, far fewer

(02:20:03):
of their starts have been uh oh starts, and Native Valde,
whose numbers are very good, just hasn't pitched as much
as they have.

Speaker 6 (02:20:09):
That's because he's a bum.

Speaker 5 (02:20:11):
He.

Speaker 7 (02:20:11):
Crochet has been great, and the Astros the best pictures
they've faced all year.

Speaker 8 (02:20:16):
By my opinion, it's a scientific fact.

Speaker 6 (02:20:18):
You know, when Crochet really took off when Rafael Dever's
got traded, Well, that's just fore I did.

Speaker 7 (02:20:23):
Mention something about Alex this segment that I'm glad you
brought it up, because I was about to do the
same thing. We had our discussion about the Dever's effect.
The effect is they have someone else in the clubhouse
that I do think helped them get.

Speaker 8 (02:20:38):
To where they are. His name's Alex Bregman, and I
think the Dever situation plays into that.

Speaker 7 (02:20:42):
I think the number of players that are new to
the league this year that they're counting on, like Roman Anthony,
even like Christian Gonzalez before him. Meyer in the middle
of all that, I think he's helped with all that,
helping getting the most out of whatever these guys have
to offer.

Speaker 8 (02:20:55):
And I do think it matters on the map.

Speaker 6 (02:20:57):
Anthony a exten he did.

Speaker 7 (02:20:59):
He did that brought Leah Anthony back up to the
podium along with a brother. I'm sure she had another
uptick in her follower count. Well, they owe them for
because it was the opener that he walked off the Astros.

Speaker 6 (02:21:10):
Was it not to one? Yes, yeah, they don't. That's
they They absolutely owe them here and it's not even
a matter of it would be nice to get them
back for the three straight wins up in Boston. Since
the Mariners apparently are never gonna lose again, you better
keep winning because if you don't, you're a half game
up going into tonight. I don't need to tell you
about the math on that. Even you, as a numbers guy,

(02:21:32):
know that. And that's a bad thing.

Speaker 7 (02:21:33):
What's what's gonna happen if they don't win? What's the
math gonna work out? How's it winna work out?

Speaker 6 (02:21:39):
Well, it's a half game lead, right, half game lead? Okay,
So if they lose tonight and the Mariners don't play,
got it? Then they'll be still in dead place? Right
because the Mariners lead the season series. All right, it's
tied five apiece, Oh it is I thought for some
reason for games? Okay, Well, then I then I digress,
because they will be tied. They will be in a

(02:22:00):
dead heat. The Mariners do not play tonight, So this
is the Astros ball game for sure.

Speaker 8 (02:22:05):
They had more games in that series so far, because
that is the first well the Astros should have dominated.

Speaker 7 (02:22:11):
All have gotten to Brian Abray once twice, three times,
four times, and they have flipped Astros victories, not just
Thai games, but the Astros victories into their own. And
that's really where the season series has gone awry. The
Mariners begin a series with the Orioles tomorrow.

Speaker 6 (02:22:31):
Why do I feel like they'll take advantage of the
garbage that the Orioles have been playing, and then it'll
be this stupid two to one series win by the
Orioles when they play the Astros.

Speaker 7 (02:22:42):
I mean the Oriols are playing the Mariners in Baltimore
and the Astros are playing Baltimore in Houston. I mean,
I hope that plays into the astros favor.

Speaker 6 (02:22:48):
Well, you would think it would. In case, I think
it will. The last two home stands have been lackluster
at best.

Speaker 8 (02:22:54):
I think it will be okay, I think it will
be all right.

Speaker 6 (02:22:56):
All right, Well, it starts tonight and we will be
about thirty minutes away from getting you ready for that
with the Astros on Deck show from out at dyke
In Park. In the meantime, we got about a half
hour left. We'll give you some tickets and we'll get
to some of the things we have not gotten to.
It is a Monday edition of The A Team. It's
Sports Talk seven ninety The A Team on Sports Talk

(02:23:19):
seven ninety.

Speaker 7 (02:23:23):
Halfway through the final hour of the program, we hit
you with in case you missed it, some items we've
not yet gotten into, or others that deserve more of
our time. One sunch item deserves a little bit more
of our times. What Cole is going to start with
the unfortunate injury over at Texans practice today.

Speaker 19 (02:23:42):
Yeah, unfortunately, does not look good for Brevin Jordan, who
was one of not only the more likable players in
the locker room, but also a guy that a lot
of people were rooting for after he played on a
torn acl last year. Some of the lower lake injury
during Monday's practice had to be carved off the heat field.
Visibly upset, gone up for a play with me, but

(02:24:02):
the CJ. Stroud pass came on down. According to Jonathan
Alexander of the Houston Chronicle, very.

Speaker 8 (02:24:08):
Much unable to move. Multiple players came on over.

Speaker 19 (02:24:11):
Then they started to console him as he began to
sob need help to get onto the cart. As he
was being carted off, let out another scream. Very emotional moment.

Speaker 8 (02:24:21):
CJ. Stroud, who very much was upset when this happened.

Speaker 19 (02:24:25):
Last season, Tank Dell gets hurt in the Kansatate Chiefs game,
had to be consoled, reportedly by Dalton Schultz before returning
to practice. Demiko Pause's practice has everyone huddle.

Speaker 8 (02:24:35):
On up, they say a prayer, then move on off.

Speaker 19 (02:24:38):
According to Sports Sex of ninety Zone insider Aaron Wilson,
the news does not looked good. Demiko Ryans did provide
not much but a slight update.

Speaker 10 (02:24:47):
Guys, here we saw Brevin go down with Andrey will
continue to evaluate Bred and see and know where he is.
Just tell for everybody to see Brevan going down on
how much work he's putting in to get back to
this point to playing football, how excited he was to
get back playing football. So just praying for him to
have a successful return.

Speaker 19 (02:25:06):
And you guys mentioned this, but this is also a
player who signed back in twenty twenty one as a
fifth round pick, got an extension last offseason because that
they wanted to see what he had value wise, So
it was going to be a very very big influential piece.
After Teraring's acl last season, got a new contract deal,
was really killing it in training camp.

Speaker 8 (02:25:26):
Now his status for the long term is in jeopardy.

Speaker 7 (02:25:28):
Yeah, signed that extension after the injury last season, knowing
that they wanted to bring him back for what they
thought he could return to. If you missed it, on
Saturday before the game, he delivered the pregame speech to
his teammates on the field, the emotional let's go.

Speaker 8 (02:25:43):
You know we're playing for everybody. You know this is
your opportunity. It's all you.

Speaker 7 (02:25:47):
Every time you get an opportunity, relish at those type
of things, and there's a lot of meaning behind those
words from a player like that in the situation that
he was in. I mentioned earlier, thirteen offensive snaps for
him during the game, caught each of the balls sent
his way, another couple of snaps as part of their
special teams unit, and had been among the all three
of their tight ends that were clearly the ones that

(02:26:08):
were going to be a part of this year's offensive push.
They all got looks in different packages with the first
unit throughout camp. Similarly, without a real true first unit
in the game and no Dalton Schultz on Saturday, he
and Cad Stover were working very well together. Are a
couple of plays that definitely stood out about how they
were operating and where these guys were lining up and
how they were deceiving the defense, and Brevin and Cad

(02:26:29):
were both a part of that. They have the numbers
at tight end, but they're missing something now, and again
this is much more about the individual and his side
of things that it is for the team. But I
don't think they have three tight ends on their current
preseason training camp roster that they would want to move
into the season with IRV Smith's been a little bit

(02:26:50):
banged up and hasn't participated in everything they've done over
the last couple of days, who was brought in last
year much more of a blocker than a receiver and
certainly could bide their time if this were a short
term injury.

Speaker 8 (02:27:00):
I don't know that it will be. And the other
guys like.

Speaker 7 (02:27:03):
Luke Lache is in a position where it's tough to
cut him because he might not clear waivers. You drafted
him for a reason, and I think they're perfectly pleased
with what he's done, but is he ready to help
them this season as one of three active tight ends.
They shouldn't go into any games with only two active
tight ends the way that Nick Kyley likely will run things.
And you know, Dalton Keen is here because of the numbers,

(02:27:24):
not because they want to play him in the regular season.
So like we thought might happen with safety because of
the CJ. Gardner Johnson injury, the Jimmy Ward being on
the pup list and he's still on the pupp list
today and Jalen Reid who is at practice today but
not participating, yet they did actually sign a safety.

Speaker 8 (02:27:42):
We had not mentioned that yet. Jalen Mills available.

Speaker 7 (02:27:45):
Safety on the free agent market, tons of field experience,
veteran player, and he is now part of the text
and should also note that Derek Barnett and fully Foughtacasi
were taken off the pupp list today to in here
or to one interior line and folly in one end
in Barnett both will be healthy, if healthy, big part

(02:28:07):
of the Texans defense.

Speaker 6 (02:28:08):
I wonder what that tight end situation you were talking about.
This is just, you know, one of those times where
you see what other teams are discarding, if you will
and just make that your depth as opposed to from
within like you were talking about.

Speaker 7 (02:28:24):
Yeah, I mean you're I just think it's an unfortunate
position to need help at because there won't be much
to look at discounting.

Speaker 8 (02:28:33):
Margin Ben and Walmart. Is that what you're saying? Sometimes
you find good things there occasionally. What else do we have?
Real fast Jalen Mills J A. L. E. N.

Speaker 19 (02:28:43):
For those trying to play catch up on how to
spell his name with all DJs, there.

Speaker 7 (02:28:48):
Four Jalens in their secondary alone. Jalen Mills Jalen Petree,
Jalen Reed, Jalen Smith.

Speaker 8 (02:28:57):
Do you think the Rockets traded another Jalen out of town?

Speaker 19 (02:28:59):
That was just way because you know, you can't also
have Jalen Thomas, Jalen Knowle, and Jayden Higgins, who is
a little bit different. Speaking of which, Jaden Higgins and
Jalen Nole played in the Big Twelve for ol Iowa State,
which will open up in Dublin as the number twenty
third ring team. But the University of Texas made history
today by becoming the first time ever number one ranked

(02:29:19):
team in the preseason poll. That that would be the
main storyline we could talk about if they didn't allso
make history for becoming the first team ever according to
betting odds, to be an underdog in their home match,
I mean in their first matchup against number three Ohio State.
Going into the game in Columbus, they are a two
point two point five point underdog against the reigning national champions.

(02:29:44):
If the line does not move, it will be the
first time in history that a number one team at
any point was the underdog in the month of September
against opposing roster month of what September?

Speaker 8 (02:30:00):
Okay, they play August thirtieth.

Speaker 7 (02:30:01):
Yeah, I mean, I don't want to stromantics you, but yeahantics,
I don't think they're going to be an underdog in
the month of September, no matter what happens in that game.

Speaker 6 (02:30:10):
I don't know. Is that in that when they played
Kentucky with their photo shoot a little bit later in
the season.

Speaker 8 (02:30:15):
Okay, this is not I mean, everybody knew this was coming.

Speaker 7 (02:30:18):
They didn't know they'd be number one, but they knew
they would be underdogs on the road at Ohio State.
Ohio State doesn't even have a starting quarterback name though
both players I think are perfectly capable of leading a
team to where they properly are preseason ranked, but I
didn't expect him to be favorites.

Speaker 6 (02:30:32):
Who's the likely start for Ohio State again.

Speaker 19 (02:30:34):
Julian sam but and he has Lincoln Keyholtz, and he
has eighty four career passing yards going into this opening week.

Speaker 8 (02:30:41):
I mean he barely played last season. He didn't have to,
That's I'm saying.

Speaker 7 (02:30:45):
Yeah, he didn't unseat their quarterback that led him to
a national title. Noah, you know, he did have enough
to get Nick Saban's attention, but didn't have enough to
unseat Will Howard, speaking of which congratulatelys start an order
to a former astro who will not be making a
re debut tonight, because that would be, of course, Justin Verlander,
who joined the club of thirty five hundred career strikeouts.

Speaker 8 (02:31:05):
This weekend in an eight nothing loss.

Speaker 19 (02:31:08):
This With his four strikeouts in this past performance, he
now only trails Walter Johnson by eleven strikeouts for a
ninth most all time, with.

Speaker 7 (02:31:17):
Three five hundred and three. Yeah, there's ten with thirty
five hundred strikeouts. Now, I guess there's some differing statisticians
out there arguing over what Walter Johnson's total actually is.
If JV wasn't so bad this year, I'd say pass
him at his next start, but he won't. I watched
a lot of coverage on this, and I guess this
is where I'll wet blanket the show. He was freaking

(02:31:39):
terrible in the game yesterday. That's eleven hits aloud, another
terrible start for him. He hasn't started a game with
an ERA under four since the second.

Speaker 8 (02:31:49):
Game of the year. That was his twentieth start yesterday.

Speaker 6 (02:31:51):
The Giants are way above five hundred as long as
Justin Verlander isn't pitching, they're five and fifteen.

Speaker 7 (02:31:58):
When he does, is he just not low? You can't
throw it past hitters often enough. They don't swing and
miss often enough. They're hitting almost three hundred against him
this year.

Speaker 8 (02:32:08):
Well, that's great. Final segment of the show. Come next.

Speaker 3 (02:32:13):
The Aight on Sports Talk seven ninety.

Speaker 6 (02:32:17):
S final segment of the show, and mention we would
have tickets to give away, and we'll do so throughout
the week. Got a pair of tickets to see George
Thurgood and the Destroyers, that's the battest show on Earth,
playing at the House of Blues August twenty seventh.

Speaker 7 (02:32:30):
Tickets on sale now at ticketmaster dot com. Giving away
a pair of tickets to that show. Also have a
pair of tickets to see The Never Ending Nineties with
Ezra ray Hart. That means you're gonna see nineties hits,
Christmas Riffs. That's in December December thirteenth, the Smart Financial
Center that is found in Sugarland. Members of Sugar ray
Tonic Better than Ezra, all performing their biggest hits along

(02:32:51):
with festive holiday favorites. Tickets will be on sale coming
up this Friday, over at the Smart Financial Center dot
dot net site. So we have a pair of tickets
today to give away to that as well. Make your
phone call. It's seventy one three two one two five
seven ninety. If you know the answer to this question,
we gave you the answer last segment, not telling you

(02:33:11):
it would be the answer to the question I'm asking now.
But if you are listening and you're a loyal listener
to the A team, we appreciate it, and here's our
payoff for you. You'll know the answer to this question.
Seven one three two one two five seven ninety JV.
Who I love and think is awesome. I had a
nice strikeout milestone passed yesterday topped the three thousand, five
hundred career strikeout mark. It's one of ten pitchers to

(02:33:34):
ever do so. And he will pass the next guy
in line and either his next start or the one
that comes after that, and slide into ninth place all time.
The player person he will pass pretty well known because
he held the all time strikeout record for a long,
long long time and now eight soon to be nine pictures,

(02:33:55):
we'll have passed him.

Speaker 8 (02:33:56):
Who is that player? He's a Hall of famer. What
is his name.

Speaker 7 (02:34:00):
His name was mentioned last segment. Who is next in
line for JV to pass on the all time strikeout list?
Justin and his brother Ben will have more combined strikeouts
than this person? And another start or two for JV.
Who is that person that JV will pass next on
the All times strikeout list? Seven one three, two, one
two five seven ninety ticks to see George Thurger and

(02:34:21):
the Destroyers or ticks to see the Never Ending Nineties
with ezra Rae Hart. All right, I need you to
give me and you can both give me this response.
What happens first in tonight's Astros Red Sox opener a
Korea hit, Bregman hit, or a strikeout by Christian Javier.
I'll take the Bregman hit. Great, Well, wait to set

(02:34:46):
the tone, wet blanket. It's it's just logic. You've got
a guy coming back from injury, so he hasn't pitched
in the Major since May of last year, and didn't
give you the Red Sox lineup. But again, from a
strategical logical standpoint, my answer was, Alex Bregman. He will
bat second, so he'll have an opportunity to bat before

(02:35:06):
any Red Sox player strikes out unless Roman Anthony strikes
out to open up the game. So unless Christian Javier
opens the game with a strikeout of their leadoff hitter,
their designated hitter presumably means he's good at hitting. They've
designated him to only hit tonight. Then there's Bregman sitting
there to take care of business against his old buddy,
who he will face for the first time in a

(02:35:28):
Major League Baseball game. I would imagine he might have
faced him in a spring training live VP situation over
the years. Karay will also like Bregman bat second in
tonight's lineup, he will be facing a potential cy Young
Award winner, So I'll go with Bregman with.

Speaker 8 (02:35:44):
The Well, I can't even vault for that because he
torched them in Boston.

Speaker 6 (02:35:49):
What do you have a couple of hits?

Speaker 8 (02:35:50):
No, he kind of hit every single game in that series.
Is that call it three? I mean, do you like
torched them?

Speaker 5 (02:35:58):
Yes?

Speaker 6 (02:35:58):
He even put the ball over the fence, did he?
You don't have to put the ball over to the
fence to torch somebody.

Speaker 7 (02:36:03):
Okay, I mean, I'm literally you're right. I mean, he's
everybody's fine with the Astros that are not burned or anything.
He had a hit in one of the three games
he went two for eleven. I thought he hit in
every single game he came to the plate. God A
swung as that.

Speaker 6 (02:36:21):
How do you how do you not get struck more?

Speaker 8 (02:36:23):
You're well, it was I didn't. I didn't remember one.
I can't do anything. Now he's waste.

Speaker 9 (02:36:30):
What do you want to do?

Speaker 6 (02:36:32):
I don't know. I want to fight.

Speaker 8 (02:36:33):
I don't want to fight.

Speaker 6 (02:36:35):
I didn't feel like coming out of that series they
lost Bregman hurt them way more with his glove. Well yeah,
but that's see. So that to me is how I
looked at Korea coming back. No idea it was gonna be.
It's not gonna be this good.

Speaker 8 (02:36:51):
It can't be. It's not.

Speaker 6 (02:36:53):
I mean, he'll be the al MVP at that rate,
not really, but you know what I mean, his glove
was going to be elite from day one. It doesn't
matter what position he played either, by the way, and
he's played both because of unfortunate circumstances. But that's you know,
I figured, Alex, that would be the way that you
would first notice. Oh yeah, he's playing against the Astros

(02:37:16):
now as opposed to for them. But yeah, both those
guys at the hot corner with the hoses they possessed
should because some good defense in this series as well.

Speaker 8 (02:37:27):
I hope there is anyway.

Speaker 7 (02:37:28):
Yeah, interesting Astros deciding to go this route with their
pitching staff.

Speaker 8 (02:37:33):
We mentioned that they made the move with Colton Gordon.

Speaker 7 (02:37:35):
Obviously, they gave the ball to Jason Alexander yesterday, and
he continued to show why that's been a very good decision.
Back to back starts without allowing unearned run. Didn't allow
a hit in that game yesterday until the sixth inning.
They're in very good shape, somewhat surprisingly in how they've
gotten to this point. Spencer Araghetty gets the ball tomorrow.

(02:37:57):
Hunter Brown gets the ball on Wednesday. You know, Dustin
May one of the few acquisitions that the Red Sox made.
He is slated to get the start on Tuesday, So
Araghetti and May go up against one another. The Astros
had better hope at least one of the two pitchers
tonight or tomorrow is starting to get locked in. And
I have to put that on Javier and his first

(02:38:19):
start back, even off of the major injury.

Speaker 8 (02:38:21):
They just can only afford so much. And I am
a little surprised that.

Speaker 7 (02:38:27):
I don't know what other options they had, because maybe
they felt more comfortable keeping bullpen arms intact than carrying
an extra starter turned longman, which is what Gordon.

Speaker 8 (02:38:36):
Could have been yesterday or today or today or tomorrow.

Speaker 7 (02:38:40):
They're going back to back starts before Hunter Brown and
before and Off Day with a question mark for your starter.
I mean, how many outs are the two starters today
and tomorrow going to get?

Speaker 6 (02:38:51):
Yeah, I mean, like even the best case scenario tonight
for Christian Javier, he's gotta be on a pitch count, right, I.

Speaker 7 (02:38:56):
Mean, he can get into the eighties. I just wonder
if that's three and a third is that four innings?
It's probably not five.

Speaker 6 (02:39:02):
Guys just want him to just pick up where he
left off. He's got like nine strikeouts, can't touch him,
and he goes six and two thirds innings.

Speaker 7 (02:39:11):
Well, I mean I brought the blanket out and pretty
much kept it out this whole hour.

Speaker 8 (02:39:16):
I think it was me.

Speaker 7 (02:39:17):
It was fine for the rest of the show, but
where he left off, I don't know if you want
that either. Like the last two seasons following his no
hitter in the postseason were not Christian haavierle like.

Speaker 6 (02:39:32):
I know his arm was about to get hurt. That's why.

Speaker 7 (02:39:34):
Well he had thirty eight starts over that time period. Well,
but his arm was fine, So.

Speaker 8 (02:39:39):
You're saying during that whole span it was bad.

Speaker 7 (02:39:42):
He was not good in twenty twenty three. He was
better in twenty twenty four. Perfectly good starter, but not
nearly the pitcher he was the year in twenty twenty
two or one or his worst two major league seasons
came in his most recent major league seasons.

Speaker 8 (02:39:55):
Well, again, the arm was going south. Okay, this is
my doctor, my doctor view of things here.

Speaker 6 (02:40:02):
Yeah, no, it hasn't been Uh, it has not been
fun for the return of pictures that had at one
point a very very good form for the Houston Astro,
Spencer Righetti was not fun last week.

Speaker 8 (02:40:13):
Hopefully that's not the case tonight for Christian Hoavier.

Speaker 6 (02:40:17):
But even if it isn't like, even if he's not
sharp as attack whatever his best version, I would like
more than three innings.

Speaker 7 (02:40:24):
Yeah, blah blah blah blah, Astros will take two out
of three at least in both of these two series.
Don't you worry, Astros fans, I got your back.

Speaker 8 (02:40:29):
The blanket is dry swept.

Speaker 7 (02:40:32):
God, they're not getting swept by the Oriols, but they
also will not have their win streak go on for forever.
We got Astros on deck immediately, like now, from the
ballpark

Speaker 3 (02:40:43):
The eight on Sports Talk seven ninety

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