The A-Team: Astros Lose Again That Way, Good/Bad/Ugly and JJ Comeback?!

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
Two lifelong Houston sports guys named Adamtalking Your Team series. Adam Clinton and
Adam Wexler are the A Team Ateam. It is the A Team here
on Sports Talk seven ninety as weget you into another week here on the

(00:25):
program, welcome back to Adam Wexler, who was out on Friday and was
missed, but obviously thanks to RossViial for stepping in. And it was
funny because we it was such ait was such an anything goes for Friday
with Wexu. I did not greetor wake any strippers at that point.

(00:46):
Yeah there, Well they probably haven'tbrunch by three o'clock. You know,
they wake up at noon on Friday. So but no, it was one
of those weekends where it really itjust the it started off so promising and
then you know, the good guypayoff on that promise and then they rolled
over and died the rest of theweekend. I had to find ways to
entertain myself otherwise because I was notgonna let them ruin it. But you

(01:08):
said it last week. I believeit was Thursday, your last day before
you were not in the rest ofthe week. They don't win that series
against Seattle. They are behind theeight ball and it is over. I
believe those were your exact words.I don't know about over, but they
have to have some you know,they got to do the things that they

(01:29):
haven't been doing this year, andunfortunately they didn't, you know, win
series, sweep series, and theones that they did not win are the
variety that they on top of that, those are the ones they really can't
afford to lose. It's not aboutgoing into a game saying, well,
so and so is pitching today.You need to get a win. This
is the Cup. Well, youdon't know that yet. You don't know
what that person or player is gonnado. You don't know if John Singleton's

(01:49):
gonna hit a two run homer,you know if Kyle Tucker is gonna hit
a two run homer. You don'tknow what Montero or Bray or Hater are
gonna bring to the table. Butwhen you have the lead in the ninth
inning or the eighth inning and you'regoing to your best theory theoretical relievers,
yeah, you do know something.I don't really care how Bryce Miller pitched
up until this point. I don'treally care how Hunter Brown looked like it

(02:14):
might be another blow up start.By the time the Astros turned things over
to the back end of their bullpen, they were six outs away with a
one run lead. Those are thegames you can't afford to lose, though.
Not only are they gut punches,they're morale killers. They're momentum killers
because it would have been a thirdconsecutive series victory for the Astros. They're

(02:34):
daily kill you just can't afford.They don't have the room to make up
for it. They don't have twohundred more games, they don't have a
zero and zero record, they aren'tten games over five hundred. They're literally
the opposite. Those are the onesthat you really just can't afford to lose,
and they've had a few at thebeginning of the season, they've had
a few in the middle portion ofthis portion of the season, and today
they're obviously coming off another one ofthose. And those are the ones that
I think hurt the most because youdo know more about that game, you're

(02:58):
further into that game. That gameis nearly a victory, and I know
there's a few that clearly are theflip side of that. A Karattini two
run homer in the bottom of thetenth with two on seems like or one
on when you're down one seems likeone of those. But remember that was
a game you had an eight tothree lead in and you kind of already
had said, well, they're notgonna lose this one. They're bullpen's not
gonna give up five more runs.Technically they didn't since a couple more of

(03:22):
those runs went to Hunter Brown.They get the off day today. They've
already made their way up East twoseries against teams and the other al divisions,
first Yankees, second Tigers, andYeat going three and three. When
two of those losses are to theteam atop your division, that's just no
way to get back into any kindof race. The longer this goes with

(03:43):
their division the way it is andthe way the rest of the American League
is playing, the odds continue toget smaller and smaller that this particular division
is going to carry multiple teams tothe postseason. It looks like it looks
like a one bid league. Lookslike you win the division, you make
the playoffs, you don't win thedivision. You watch there the a from
twenty three, Well, I don'tthink they're quite that bad. Well,
the Astros are no The Astros arethe A's from last year. Oh hey,

(04:08):
I was being mean. You tookit to another level. Well that's
where they are. The Angels aren't. Unfortunately, can't try anymore since their
best two players from last year's teamare gone and they didn't add anybody that's
any good. So they stink.They literally, they definitely should be the
worst team in the division, andthey've got a long way to go to
catch the White Sox as the worstteam in the American League. Up,

(04:29):
the Astros are looking up at everybodybasically except for the White Sox the whole
league, and the Angels have thesame record as they do. Basically,
there are so many teams to pass, there's so much better baseball that needs
to be played. And I thinkby the time the Astros get back home.
I don't know if Joe Spott decidesto do it in advance of the
games at Yankee Stadium and the trioof pitchers they're set to face there,

(04:50):
or if he continues to believe forno reason that things are about to change
and he waits till Detroit. Butthere's no way when they get back to
Houston and less more offense has comeoff of his bat. There's just no
way you can bat Alex Bregman fourthanymore. Those days are over for this
season in my opinion. I don'tknow, I said, I don't know
what Joe decides to do, andI'm fully aware that he. Bregman and

(05:14):
Jordan Alvarez are equally awful over theirlast fifteen games. They're both hitting under
two hundred over their last fifteen games. And then when they're three and four
in the lineup or two and threein the lineup again, forget about getting
anything done because that's where unfortunately,Astro's innings have gone to die of late.
But I have more belief in aguy who's at least done it for

(05:35):
some of this year and for allof the rest of his career than I
think the Astros should continue to have. And I'm sure Bregman will get it
and we'll figure it out and willstop popping out or grounding into double plays.
But grinding happening. So the longeryou go, the more offensive few
offensive innings you have to get one, two, three, four runs in

(05:56):
or are just ending. Because ithas been very very close to an automatic
out. The guy's hitting two hundredwith zero power, and all of his
advanced numbers point to all the reasonswhy. We've got two plus hours to
get into a lot of those reasonswhy, but the tech. The Astros
definitely did not take advantage of theirfirst series of the season against the best
team in the division. They wononce and lost twice. Yeah, it

(06:19):
was about as depressing a weekend asI've had in quite some time. As
it pertains to the my weekend wastotally fine, by the way I didn't
finis the second time you've said yourweekend was ruined by them or you wouldn't
let them. Why do they ruinyour weekend? I just said I would
let them. You have to letme. I mean, I can't know
you. I don't have to letyou. You literally said it. I'm
repeating my wife. It's insane.Why why is this? I don't even

(06:42):
get to send it down and youstart talking over me. There we are.
Why Why can't you watch them losethree games or listen to them lose
three games, three miserable days ofbaseball, three giveaways, walk in the
winning run, trip over themselves runningthe bases, and still have a good
weekend. I did have a goodweek, and I just about to say
I made sure it was a goodweek, and in spite of him,
that's what I was trying to getout. I'm just letting that marinate so

(07:06):
everybody hears it. It's not likeit was on Netflix last night. Man,
I honestly, and I texted youthis earlier today. I'm not even
kidding, And there's no way wecan do it with that extensive editing.
I would I would probably, Iwould probably take Nicki Glazer and all the
choices with last night's panel. Well, if that's what you mean, and

(07:30):
if that's what I was into,which it is, I mean, you
have to say that these days youhave you don't say it have to people
know who you are. I thinkthey get the idea, even though the
whole night last night was spent pretendingthat's not what Tom is into. How
many different ways can people on thedais say, basically, they think Tom
Brady's gay. That's what they did. Alex Guerrero was there in the front.

(07:51):
That was usually the brunt of thosejokes. Galli Check got in a
gay joke about those two. Therewere a lot of them. It was
definitely Netflix appropriate it was so youknow, full Discrady roast. Oh,
we forget to tell you that theTom Brady that's what we're talking about.
Yeah, I forgot. I meanI knew it was coming up, and
then I kind of like it escapedmy mind. I had other things going

(08:13):
on, and the wife from theother room, dude, the Tom Brady
roast. Of course, by thetime she texts that, it's late enough
to where it's already started the livestream. So you're just gonna have to
We're gonna have to start over orstart, you know, from the beginning
after And so that's what we did. And I think, you know,
like again, Nicki Glazer was probablymy favorite. And if you've seen this

(08:35):
you kind of you know where I'mgoing. But I mean, man,
just body blow after body blow,and that's what a roast is. Like
Kevin Hard every ten minutes would justsay f you Tom, just for the
just for the fun of it.I mean, it was and I don't
know when the last major roast was, do you know, can you think
of it? There are zero roaststhat they've aired, even though none of

(08:58):
them were like this, like there'vebeen some major Justin Bieber is a good
one because of who's on the stage. It's a lot of obviously not the
athlete side, but you know,Peyton's been roasted in that format, and
other athletes have been among them,and all the comics, several of the
comics that were there last night roastworthyare at a lot of those roast also.
But this was, you know,I packed at arena, was so

(09:22):
people there very a little bit different. They had a few people in the
crowd that were given the mic aswell, but weren't on stage. Dana
White, Kim Kardashian had a coupleof people come on to stage and then
leave so they wouldn't get roasted quiteas harshly. Ben Affleck, Peyton,
Manning, and I guess Will Ferrell. Yes, so yes, this was

(09:43):
on a much much grander scale.And I do feel like at the end
of it, Tom Brady could havebeen given half an hour and he would
still not have run out of stuffto say. Took the mic, and
Belichick took the mic, and Gronktook the mic. Comics all around,
And I would rate it a tenout of ten. Yeah, no,
I put it eleven hours. Wehave selected a handful of jokes roasts from

(10:07):
the events of last night, Ihad to drop one censor beep in So
for the most part they were cleaner. How did you find that? Find
what a SoundBite at all? Thathad not even a beep Because the other
thing they made fun of more thananything else was his marriage or kids or

(10:28):
family. So those were cleaner.And then some of the roast jokes that
I've pulled are also not necessarily pointedat Tom, because if you're up on
stage and or you take the mic, you're going to get roasted all so,
and sometimes those are the best ones, the one about what the jiu
jitsu instructor could do to Tom whilehe's also doing something else to Giselle.

(10:50):
Did I clean that up enough?Yeah? I have no idea what you're
talking about? Oh, totally clean. Yeah, So we'll sprinkle those in
the course of the afternoon. Texansare a couple of days closer to being
on the field. The Rookie Minicampwill take place this weekend. There was
a charity event. Texans players andcoaches, I guess have taken part in

(11:13):
a bunch of charity events over thecourse of the last couple of months since
the season ended against the Ravens.This one was the JJ Watt Charity Softball
Classic, and of course JJ talkedand was asked about it was his ongoing
non committal to I'm never going toplay football again. And since we're over
at the Texans Foundation Golf Classic today, we had a chance to ask the

(11:37):
head coach his friend, his teammate, JJ Watt said this about coming back.
What say you at is all atwitter on the X platform, So
yes, we will address that aswell. Looking forward to all of that
here on a Monday edition of theA Team. And I'm looking literally forward
to telling you guys about better vision, because that's what it's about, right.

(12:00):
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it'd be a late night or whatever, and sometimes you're just too lazy and
you just want to crawl into bed, right. You don't want to wash

(12:22):
your face or even brush your teeth. Yeah, I know there's some of
you out there, disgusting, filthyanimals like that that do that every now
and again, like I do everynow and again. And part of that
was, ah, my contacts,I gotta take them out, and I'm
asleep, and then you wake upthe next morning and it feels like you
have nails in your eyes. It'sjust terrible. Get rid of that feeling.
Get rid of contacts altogether, becauseyou don't love your contacts enough to

(12:46):
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(13:07):
dot com or call our LASK teamat seven one three five two six e
y E s seven one three fivetwo six eyes. Tell them Madam Clinton
from Sports Talk seven ninety sent youover and remember with Berkeley I Center,
the sooner you call the sooner yousave back to Adam Clinton at Adam Wexler
the eighteen on Sports Talk seven ninetyso, as I was saying, I

(13:28):
didn't let the Astros ruin my weekend, not a chance. And now you
know what, I'm also like,I've already it's it's May sixth. They're
awful from a record standpoint, andreally just in general, I'm not gonna
sit here and say they're not anawful baseball team. They're not the worst,
but they're kind of the worst.I mean, they're close. They're
definitely the worst when you factor intheir talent they have. Yeah, it's

(13:52):
so like that they are the biggestbleep tees ever this season because they have
the talent. Hell, yesterday,they'll go ahead and just take the lead
late, but they're going to giveit back. And by the way,
since we're here, let's just getthis out of the way. Now,
that's the worst contract that Jim Crane'sever handed out. It's not even close.
I'm sorry, but the factors,like you just said, if you
want to go down the list andyou want to talk about things, you

(14:15):
can't give ninety five million to aguy to replace your closer who's already still
on the roster and is going toremain on the roster and have him blow
leads like this and everything's fine,and it's not the worst contract you've ever
given out. Rafael Montero is laughingat the deal for Josh Hater, and
I know he's probably going to notbe this bad throughout the life of this
deal. But goes back to theoriginal point, whether he was good or

(14:37):
not. It's like, say,Josh Hater was having a decent season,
which he's not, but let's sayhe is. If you can't get to
him for other factors that are badabout the Astros this year, then that
doesn't matter. So all factors given, that's the worst contract that Jim Crane's
ever handed out, especially when youconsider here's your hand out long term big
money deals. It's terrible. Yeah, come on, you know, five

(15:00):
years ninety million for a closer,it should qualify as a long term,
big money deal. He's one ofthe highest paid players at his positioned,
he's got one of the longest contractsfor any player at his position. He's
thirty, and all those things areusually negative for what the Astros have done
under previous decision makers who all workunder Jim Crane, and it's worthwhile to

(15:22):
say considering you didn't mention Dana Brown'sname once and for good reason because he
had nothing to do with this.I mean, he doesn't have nothing to
do with it, but he's notthe ultimate decision maker on it. And
we know that thing, many ofthe moves that have been made since Jeff
Luno was ushered out of the building. But one more thing about this whole
situation, just the hater contract.Not only did you directly rock the boat,

(15:48):
I guess is the best way toput it. With Ryan Presley,
you know, you're literally telling himyou're not our closer anymore, and you're
gonna need to be on the teamstill, and we want you to still
be as effective in a different rolethat you've never had here, and you're
losing the role that you earned here, had that role here not But he's
been the closer for the majority ofhis tenures, an Astros, what I'm
saying, that's what I'm getting at, which is the truth, I guess.

(16:11):
But you're also gonna run, well, okay, how long has he
not been the closer versus how longhas he Let's do it that half and
a half three years, not threeyears. Yes, and this would tip
the scale in the to the fourthyear direction. Okay, it seems like
he hasn't been here since twenty eighteen, but he's been here since twenty eighteen.
No need to half year because hewas traded at the deadline. Oh

(16:32):
I forgot he was a trade forsome reason. I thought they signed him
in the offseason, but there's noHe came in from Minnesota that year and
was absolutely lights freaking out. Iremember him in Boston, especially at Fenway.
He was really good. It wasincredible. The following year COVID shortened
year, he was also very good. His first two years is the closer.
He was unreal and would All Staron one of those two seasons.
And last year he was good butnot among the best until the playoffs.

(16:56):
Playoffs. He's never been anything butawesome, been anything but awesome. But
I actually, totally I don't haveany sleep lost over moving him out of
the closing. And that's getting tooThat's what I'm getting to. So you
you rock the boat with him though, because he does have an issue with
it, whether we do or not. Ryan Presley absolutely does. He just
said all the right things because he'sa pro. He didn't like that he's

(17:18):
been the guy he was on themound when you clinched your second World Series
title. He got those outs,and you're gonna bring in Josh Hater,
well, because he's Josh Hater.So that's a big reason why he said
all the right things. But here'sthe other problem with that. You know
who else you rock the boat with? Guys like Kyle Tucker and I guess,
to a lesser extent, but nowmore so Alex Bregman, who they're

(17:38):
gonna want big money deals. Andyes it's a different role, but that
makes it even worse. You're payinga guy for that much for one inning
when you use him. I mean, I know it's not three hundred million,
it's ninety five million. Best stillfor a for an owner who has
a reputation of basically letting guys walk, and if you're going to buck the
trend, it's gonna be for acloser. I just I think all around,

(18:02):
it's one of like a dozen thingsthat you could point to that I
mean, I know I said thislast year just didn't feel right from the
jump in twenty twenty three, butit ended up working out, Okay,
until you play the Rangers. Nothinghas felt good about twenty twenty four.
So how is it the same forTucker and Bregmant Because you're basically just talking
about three guys that you forced toget in their feelings, Presley Tucker.
Tucker is having arguably the best seasonof his career offensively, but you and

(18:25):
I right now definitely having the worstseason in his career. And you're talking
about contractually speaking, these guys arelooking for big, long term deals and
it's a relative to the position,right, So they're they're literally doing the
exact opposite of each other, Sothey can't both be in their feelings.
Well, I said, to alesser extent Bregman because of how he's playing.
But coming into this season, youknew the likelihood of him coming back

(18:47):
was low because of what major factor. And then you get to everything else
because the owner is not going togive him that kind of deal. That's
what I'm getting at, right,But what does that have to do with
how it makes them feel? No, I'm just saying rocking the boat in
general from an organizational standpoint, whenyou have guys in the clubhouse looking around
saying okay, you gave all thismoney to this guy who was never even
a part of this last seven yearrun. But you're not going to resign

(19:08):
Kyle Tucker, and you're not goingto resign Alex Bregman, and you're gonna
move Ryan Presley out of the rolefor this guy you're bringing in. I'm
just that. But how does it. I do understand what you're saying,
and this is super argumentative and Idon't mean it this way you but like,
so that's an excuse for Bregman beingthat at baseballs, know what I'm
saying, For Presley being unable toget outs as often as he has every

(19:30):
year of his career no prior tothis year, Like that doesn't like you're
you're basically saying the guy torpedoed histeam from a mental standpoint, and this
is how they're repaying him by beingunable to function in any positive way.
This is terrible for Ryan Presley's future. He's in the last year of his
deal, right. This is terriblefor Alex Bregman's future. He's in the
last year of his deal, right, So why would they care that they're

(19:53):
not going to get paid by theAstros because they got somebody else to get
take their money, so to speak. They're not gonna make any money from
anybody if they don't play better.And that's kind of the whole point of
the season is it's baseball as stupidas everyone thinks. That comment is from
Craig Bizzeo and everybody else that saysit. Josh Hater actually said it again

(20:14):
last night. Oh, it's hardto not the Astros made it look so
bleeping easy. The Yankees, theBraves. The Dodgers have been comparable to
the Astros for seven straight years.That Braves are like jumping for joy.
They got to and won a WorldSeries. The Dodgers are almost in total

(20:37):
disbelief. They got to and wonone World Series another according to Cody Bellinger,
but the Astros cheated them out ofit. They've been to another.
The Yankees haven't been to any WorldSeries, and the Astros have kept them
from going to those World Series multipletimes. Have been the team celebrating as
the Yankees were crying, nah,that all these things shouldn't have come to

(20:59):
a had all the same time totheir Yeah, it's just really hard to
play baseball. It's really hard toget hits. Well, if Bregman was
hitting two hundred and Alvarez was stillcarrying a one thousand ops. If Presley
was down a little bit, butBrian Obray and Josh Hater had only given
up runs in three of their fifteenoutings or two of their sixteen outings,
this team would probably be five hundredat worst. But each one of those

(21:22):
things is so far out of thenorm. You have too many key players.
And again we I had a longconversation with somebody in the media about
Jose Bray and we're like, well, if Jose Bray wasn't there, then
everybody would be focused on Bregman,And if Bregman wasn't there, then everybody
be focused on Chas McCormick. Andwhen you start to realize, well,
that's thirty three percent of your everydaylineup, Now do your don We'll have
given you next terrible lately. Butat least in his case, it's only

(21:45):
a lately. Some of his seasonhas been good, and in the middle
of that he did hit two homeruns. Yeah, none of this seasons
for the other three guys have beengood at any point. There's no no
even stretch of well they were greatthis week or they had a great series.
There's nothing close to it. Arethree guys that basically would start five
or six games a week, ifnot more. Bregman plays every inning,
Chazz would be an everyday player.Obviously we know he's hurt now, and

(22:07):
a bra you can't even be amajor leaguer right now. All that being
said, you just look back atthe weekend that was, and they had
a great opportunity to take down ateam that has been absolutely lights out pitching.
They couldn't get to Bryce Miller formost of the afternoon and they hit
to two run homers and they gotthe best of him. They couldn't do
anything with George Kirby and then wonhis start. They got the best of

(22:30):
their bullpen and were able to winclearly the game in between. Loan Logan
Gilbert showed again like they didn't evenface Luis Castile, right, and the
their starters are so much better thaneverybody else in base Yeah, but the
problem was the lineup of you weretalking about all the trying hard not to
cuss at the bottom of it carriers, Yeah, I mean good, I

(22:52):
had some ass hat in Montana.I thought you were trying not to No
that's not cussing. That's what heis. He's an ass hat in Montana
who's originally I had to look thisguy up. I had to. I
mean, he came to my Facebookpage and started making just nonsense comments,
so I had to, you know, I was like, why are you
in Montana rooting so hard for theMariners and posting pictures of them holding holding

(23:14):
Ariel's Father's tried it from the LittleMermaid because that's a thing that they do.
Someone told me that that tried inthings. That's that seems pretty cool.
And who said that that's what losingteams do exactly? Who said that
to you? I want to knowtheir name, I want their social I
want their home address. M itwasn't anybody that's related to you, is
it? I told you I wasn'tgonna tell you. Seth. Did you

(23:36):
say that to him? He didn'tsay, you think Seth think that's cool?
I would hope not. He's relatedto you. You said somebody related
to you said this. I didn'tanswer that question. You did not answer
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Is Kyle Tucker catch every Astros gameon Sports Talk seven ninety Glover and streaming

(25:11):
on the free iHeartRadio app. Prettykilled the guy? Did you throw?
Yeah? There were horses and aman on fire and I killed a guy
with a trident. Yeah. Iused that over the weekend in the one
video I could do. Oh.I love them right now. You know
why because they make it very hardto trash talk, so to speak,

(25:36):
on their behalf. So yeah,that's uh, that's difficult. It really
is. And right now, ifyou're an Astros fan like Okay, for
example, yesterday's starter Hunter Brown,you have no idea what you're getting on
any given outing. It's a it'sthe most bipolar pitcher I've ever seen.

(25:56):
You got that's pretty polar. No, this year, it is the points
are his good starts. It's it'sinnings within the starts that are very good.
That's the problem. That's what I'msaying. For the first In the
second he's good. Yeah, butyesterday he didn't have a I mean,
he had a lot of traffic.He had. He made it harder on

(26:17):
himself. And the first in thesecond, bases loaded, got out of
it in the second, got thebases loaded again, didn't get out of
it, or the first two guysgot on in the first not bases loaded,
and then the rest of the daynothing. Yeah, probably could have
even finished if again, his problemis early. I know he's given up
runs later, but his problem isis pretty simplistic. It's a big one

(26:37):
because unless you're giving him an opener, he's going to pitch in the first
inning, and he's probably not always, but probably going to pitch in the
second inning. Oh well, here'sthe thing. Doesn't the fact that he's
doing this in his first innings moreoften than not make it hard to even

(26:57):
logically are argue that he should bea bullpen guy. If that's the route
you wanted to take, and shakethings up and change it, you know
what I mean, It changes yourarsenal. You're probably gonna use your diff
pitches, but the first two guysyou face are gonna be the best.
Well, wouldn't they be like yourfirst inning, which is awful? Well,
it depends on where you're at inthe in the order of the opposition

(27:18):
and what the opposition brings to thetable, and all that. But here's
where I'm getting at. Right now, I'm gonna ask you a question,
point blank, and you have tobe honest. Your house depends upon it
or whatever, something avalue. Whocares. I've never met somebody who cares
less about their home than Adam Wexson. You'll see why. Hey, uh
yeah, I'm gonna be late today. Why I have raccoons in my house.
That's that's not even the worst part. I know. That's I'm being

(27:41):
I was being nice, and Ithink finally that problem has been lit finally
thanks to our buddy Chris Campbell.Yes, sir, so here's the deal
right now, gun to your heador house is on the line or whatever.
Your family's being held ransom. Allright, you got to pick the
right answer. Better, find anew family. Who do you? Who
do you trust more? Coming intoa game, Hunter Brown or Rafeo Montero.

(28:07):
I wish the options were better,but that's your options. But we're
also so Christian Havier made a rehabstart an awesome looking Hooks games. God,
because Fromber didn't do anything for you, so he'll probably I would.
He's not listed as any of thethree starters in their upcoming series against the
Yankees, So there's still no worddefinitively on when they think he's going to
return, either is Hunter or Fromberthank God. Well as the further they

(28:30):
go into this area where they mayor may not carry six starters. If
they do, it's still not agiven that Hunter remains. It's almost a
given he does not like the nextperson to return should send him to the
bullpen. I don't have much confidencein him yet because I've never seen him
do it as the pitcher he istoday. We saw him coming out of
the bullpen quite a bit when hefirst came up and was on the postseason

(28:52):
roster, and then he was onthe postseason roster out of the bullpen again,
so I'm not too concerned about it. But the same thing would still
remain. He's got to put guysaway. He's gonna come out of the
bullpen. He's gonna go oh oneto two on guys, and then what
is he gonna throw four balls onthe next five pitches with the guy fouling
one off. That's really what's happenedto him in those first few innings.
It's not who he's facing, it'swhen he's facing them. If he faces

(29:15):
them early in the game, theyhit him. He's allowing a five thirteen
batting average in the first inning.Half of the hitters who don't walk get
a hit off him. That isinsane. Yeah, that's three hundred is
awful. Four hundred is unheard of. I'm not gonna say it again because
it'll never happen again. They're hittingfive thirteen off him. They're still hitting

(29:36):
four oh seven off him in thesecond inning, and then in the third
inning, is era is zero.They're hitting one ninety one against him.
In the fourth inning, his ERAis zero. They're hitting one thirty three
off of him fifth inning. Grantedhe's barely pitched into the fifth inning,
so I will neglect that number foryou. I mean, here's the deal.
And when you say return, you'retalking about guys are unhealthy, not

(30:00):
like, for example, oh,JP Franz has been called back up.
Because I'm talking about Xavier Returns,He's obviously getting a starting splat he returns,
so Verlander, Valdez Javier. Iwould assume, right, al Blanco's
spot is safeish is that the bestpitcher top to bottom all season? Right?
I just think there's an opportunity togive Hunter Brown a different role,

(30:23):
different job. Yeah. No,and again the answer should have been Hunter
Brown because of his stuff more thananything else. Well, Rob, again,
they do have a similar problem,it's it's a different results. They
both have unbelievable stuff. The locationof their pitches is what's the biggest issue.
It's happened to Montero's whole Astro's careeron the stretches of games where he's

(30:45):
locating well, that means he's gettingguys to swing at his pitches, both
on and off the plate. That'swhy strikeout numbers are still usually pretty good.
They're not even that great this yearfor the amount of time that he's
been very good this year, butwhen he makes his mistakes, they're just
absolutely destroyed. Maybe the best ballhit all weekend was the home run he
allowed to nuke Raley, as hewas called by their broadcast team. He

(31:07):
now has a home run this season, but it was hitt into the upper
deck. I don't know if itwas better than the cal Raley homer yesterday
was longer, more majestic, butequally as crushing. Cal raw Fat.
Yeah, he's got eight home runsand four from each side of the plate.
Switch hitting ketcherwo hits bombs seems likea pretty good asset to have,
and it is for them, especiallywith them struggling offensively. Monterra just you

(31:30):
know, he just has not quiterepeated his tremendous season, but he's still
getting the job done more often thannot. He has still gotten the job
done more often than each of thethree guys who normally follow him. And
that's where the focus of the Wexlerresearch team was. And when you compare
these three pitchers, a brad Who, Presley, and Hater to their performances
last season, Hater obviously elsewhere isthe closer, Presley here as the closer,

(31:55):
and a Bray who arguably the bestpitcher in baseball that wasn't a starter
or a close. Josh Hater wasscored upon nine times last year. He
made sixty one the whole season.Fifty two times they called for him to
come out of the bullpen and hedid not allow a run on his ledger.
He's appeared in fifteen games this yearand he's allowed runs in seven of

(32:15):
them. One of them was anunearned run in the tenth, So seven
times out of fifteen you've brought himinto the game, and six of those
seven with nobody on and he hasnot been able to get out of that
without allowing runs to score. Yesterdaydidn't cost them the game. It cost
them the opportunity to win the gamebecause they weren't winning when he came in.

(32:37):
And that's the other part of what'ssuper different for these guys. And
I have to, I guess reluctantlyacknowledge when we watch it happened year after
year after year with closers and youknow, set up guys, and when
they're brought into games and the situationsthat are in front of them. You
know, he's already come into agame nine times where they've been trailing or

(32:59):
the game was tied. It onlyhappened twelve times an entire season. For
an entire season, he did ittwelve times last year. It's happened nine
times this year. And I don'teven know what again, what is Joe
spot is supposed to do? Ishe supposed to pitch a Brave in the
fifth before seth Martinez, before RafielMontero. Is he supposed to hold Josh

(33:19):
Hater until it's extra innings it's afour to four game. I mean,
he got shut out baseball briefly forMartinez, he got a shutout inning from
Dubin and then each of his othertwo relievers he used. He was going
to be the fifth reliever yet usedyesterday. Two of them gave up a
run. Two of them gave shutout baseball. Is black pitching out a
day after giving him three innings?Like what else? He doesn't have options

(33:40):
unless he turns the bullpen upside down, which isn't a real life Here's something
else I never thought i'd say thisyear. Where would they be without Seth
Martinez? The guy just I mean, he's never It doesn't always go well
pretty much. Guys always comes inwith just the bleep is hitting the fan
if you don't do your job,and he does his job, I can't
say that for Josh Hater. Hehas had a very very good season,

(34:01):
and I don't think the problem hasbeen their middle release. And I like
Josh Hater by the way. Yeah, granted, I think the way that
they went about it and the numberof innings they were losing versus the number
of innings they were bringing back andsigning Hater for a different role didn't make
a whole lot of sense. Butbe nice if they would have taken advantage.
That's all I think of this weekend. I had a golden opportunity to,

(34:22):
you know, really find a wayto make up some ground mentally.
We just had the number one teamin our division come to town and we
beat them two out of three.We've already beaten the Rangers four out of
seven. These are the things thatcould help them way down the road.
And like I said at the onsetof the show, yesterday's game was one
of those I can't believe we letthis one get away. They found a
way to get to one of thebest pitchers in baseball to the tune of

(34:44):
four runs. It had been threeweeks since a Marinder starter had given up
more than two runs, and itwasn't enough, even though they had a
four to three lead after seven.I'm so tired of it, all right,
you know what, I'm not tiredof the fact that no matter what
you're watching, sporting event, anykind of sport, whatever you're looking to

(35:05):
get into. If you're you knowwhat, maybe you're watching an Astros game
of late and you just are like, I need a drink. Well,
good news, you can go toTom's watch bar and you can get both
knocked out right then and there.If it's not gone, well they've got
something that can probably dull the pain. But here's the deal at Tom's Watch
Bar Downtown Caroline and Pulk right thereon the corner. If you're going to

(35:28):
an Astros game as this homestand iswrapped up, but before you know it,
they'll be back home again. Theyare going to free shuttle you too
and from the game, and youcan park in their Green Street garage and
they'll validate your parking and then they'regoing to do that shuttle to and from
the game. So parking is notgoing to be an issue for you.
I can't do anything about the baseballbut I can't tell you that Tom's Watch

(35:49):
Bar is going to do everything intheir power to make it at a stress
free situation for you. Seven gamesback at home starting next Monday through the
full week. You can enjoy everythingTom's has to offer. Like you mentioned
that free shuttle when you park atthe Green Street garage, get your ticket
validated, take advantage of their freeshuttle to get you to and from the
ballpark. And obviously you're taking advantageof everything Tom's has to offer including buy

(36:10):
one, get one drink specials atDowntown's Ultimate Sports Bar. Great seating inside,
great seating outside, not a badseat in the house, and a
great place to enjoy everything behind thebar and everything from out of their kitchen,
Burgers, tacos, salads, specialmac and cheese, and of course
fantastic wings at Downtown's Ultimate Sports Bar. It's Tom's Watch Bar. Like I

(36:31):
always say, if it's on,it's on at Tom's Watch Bar. Adam
Clinton and Adam Wexlor, the Ateam now continues, Why don't we talk
about something positive for a change.The Texans are good again. We can
talk about them because well, you, for example, had access to Demico

(36:53):
Ryans and company, exclusive access noone else got today as you caught up
with the Texans head coach. Nowin all seriousness, you mentioned the charity
event over the weekend, for example. It's just like when things are going
as poorly as they are for theAstros, it is nice to be able

(37:14):
to at least have you know,you look at another organization around town and
even though they're not playing, theyhave like positive vibes around them. And
for a long time it was theAstros offsetting the horrible vibes around the Texans
organization. But that has flipped andthe Rockets, I think they're somewhere in
the middle, but they've kind ofgot that upward trend as well. We
were just discussing, like, youknow, this time next year, I

(37:36):
think the Rockets will be coming offsome sort of playoff action remains to be
seen. It's the next logical step, though. Yeah, I'd be insanely
disappointing if they're not. Yeah,that's not actually so easy to get there.
Not even that they are clearly goingto be better. But if you're
not, then you somehow got ayear older with the core of your team
who's supposed to get better each year, and you didn't. That would be

(37:59):
an incredibly disappointing I'm sure it'll looka little different. They have long since
had their GM availability after their seasonended. I put in a good twenty
plus minutes listening to the Sixers GM. His end of season media availability was
earlier today. There were a coupleof things I was pretty surprised to hear
him say. Even though I knowwhat he meant, I still heard what

(38:20):
he said, and I don't knowthat it matches up with what you'd want
considering, He answers the bell allthe time. I was asked a question
talking about Darryl Moore, the Ishouldn't say GM. He's the president president
of basketball at Brams GM. Hewas asked about how confident they were in
Tyrese Maxi kind of taking a stepand kind of where they view him now
in terms of building around, andhe had already talked twenty minutes about I've

(38:44):
got two players to build around,and you know, we'd love where we're
going. Obviously, we need toget better. I feel like I didn't
do it a good enough job thisyear. There are a lot of games
we need to do a better jobof figuring out how to win without Joel.
If that's the case, you know, we're still building a team that
we plan on having Joel for That'skind of ninety percent of our thinking that,
you know, So we're gonna wina championship if he's out there with
them. And so he was askeda question about Tyrese Maxey. How confident

(39:07):
you were were you that you knowhe would be able to elevate his game
to this level, and he said, we were pretty confident, but after
watching this year, I mean,there's no question about it. He's great.
There's no doubt in our minds atall that he can be the second
best player on a championship team.He meant it as a compliment. It
certainly does not sound like one forthe caliber of player or tyres Well,

(39:31):
it's just I wouldn't have said itthat way. Yeah, you got to
be I think you have to becareful. And I don't know if he
needs to rehab a conversation with MAXIto explain what he meant. But first
of all, of all teams withtwo stars, there's very few that we're
having to carry as much weight ashe was because the other star wasn't there.
Yeah, so he did that allseason long. He had an unbelievable

(39:52):
you know, all of his gamesin their series against the Knicks weren't unbelievable,
but enough of them were, orenough of when they had to have
baskets were like, he hit thetwo biggest shots of their entire season late
in that game, and then theirseason ended so embarrassingly bad. They had
a chance to tie the game lateand they had the ball out of bounds

(40:15):
about three seconds left, about sixtyfeet from the bucket and Nick Batoom throws
it into the front court to BuddyHealed. Dante DiVincenzo was trying to prevent
them from throwing it into Maxi,which he did, but as soon as
the ball went into Healed, Maxijust took off and so he was fifty
forty thirty feet from the basket,and Heal never looked at him like,

(40:36):
even if you have the ball,there's enough time to get it to your
best player, which he didn't do. He threw up this embarrassingly bad shot,
went off. The backboard wasn't evenclose, and Maxi was absolutely unguarded
and wide open from roughly as theysay in the NBA the logo nonetheless,
that's another team. That's what youknow. The Clippers. Lawrence Frank spoke

(40:57):
to the media today, as weare now underway in the second round.
You could call the Mavericks series anupset, or you could say the team
that was healthy won because Kawhi Leonardwasn't there. I'm not telling you what
happened, but that is still true. And the other series where a team
that wasn't seeded one through four thatadvanced was the team that played injured out

(41:21):
Inkompo and injured Lillard and unfortunately thisand it's not a fool proof way,
but it truly almost always dictates whathappens in the postseason. Most of the
teams still playing are close to ifnot fully healthy. Rudy Gobert could miss
tonight's game for personal reasons. Whocares one to Oh, they should care,

(41:43):
because that's one of the reasons whyDenver. Not only do they have
to slow down sause Anthony Edwards playing. Yeah, that's kind of the Then
this is it's interesting where the leaguewill go. And we mentioned all these
names when it was confirmed that noLebron, no Steph Curry, no Kevin
Durant, etc. Would be playingin this postseason after the opening round or
playing tournament, and the league isin the hands of players like Anthony Edwards.

(42:07):
I don't know if fans are evergoing to get to know him if
he doesn't win a title because hedoesn't play where they're I mean, the
league helps set this up. Theydon't put Minnesota games on national TV,
then people aren't gonna watch them.They can't watch him on League pass only
And think enough people are doing thatto know this player has been the best
player in the twenty twenty four postseason, and hardly anybody's seen him play before

(42:30):
the last three weeks. Well,yeah, and a big part of that
is obviously the fact that he's beenplaying in Minneapolis and he's not going anywhere.
By the way, people who nationallywant to say otherwise, who's saying
that he wants to Nationally? Maybea bit strong, but sometimes when it
comes out of New York, peoplethink it's national. Oh man, he's

(42:50):
gonna want out of Minnesota? Whyand how because his brand new about to
kick an extension isn't gonna pay himenough? Because he's unhappy with winning?
Does he hate winning? Most playersdon't hate winning. I mean, it
seems like Kevin Durant did, butmost players don't, especially when you're the
best player on the team and everythingis about you bringing this team to a

(43:12):
place they've never been before, andhe's doing it, You're not going anywhere.
I'm looking at his numbers and it'sjust like, this is this is
what the Rockets hope happens with JalenGreen. Now, the numbers are way
better for him, but don't youthink And the reason I bring that up
is because when he was when hecame into the league he was nineteen.

(43:32):
A lot of parallels. I likewhat you're saying, but my defense like
him. No, my parallel isn'thim, but it's still a rocket.
It's the same parallel, same parallelof you. Since the day they drafted
him last year, Thompson cam wentMoore, Oh, well, yeah,
dude, you don't have to talkto me, but that's he plays like
him. He has the bounce likehim, he has the physical traits like

(43:57):
him. He has the if hewants to do some of the those things
like him and can has the abilityto play that on the other end of
the floor like Anthony Edwards does.I mean, is it's awesome that he
is playing really good defense on ateam that stresses defense and has many other
awesome defensive players on it. Butthey're winning because he is an animal on
offense. The best player in theNBA right now is him. It's just

(44:20):
insane what he's doing right now.And again it's not I mean, they're
making comparisons to Jordan, which usuallywhen you do that is just stupid.
But I see where they're coming from. Let's put it that way, all
right. Four o'clock hours straight aheadhere on the A Team Sports Talk seven
ninety two lifelong Houston sports guys namedAdham talking your teams. Adam Clinton and

(44:49):
Adam Wexler are the A Team apour number two of the eight team here
on Sports Talk seven nineties. Wemercifully have a Astros off day. I'll
tell you right if it weren't forJustin Verlanders starting this series. The thing
is, I'm actually not as worriedas I probably would have been prior to

(45:10):
his last start about Spencer Arraghetty,those will be famous last words. He's
slated to start game two of thisseries, three game set coming up in
the Bronx with a team that,frankly, they've got a lot going for
them, unless you're Aaron Judge andyou're getting ejected. How was his first

(45:30):
career ejection over the weekend. Yeah, because what he did is along the
lines of what he always does orless. Got called out on a third
strike. Despite what some of theYankees media tweeted about it. I did
see someone call it an atrocious thirdstrike call caught the black. That's not
media should have been a strike.A fan, I can understand being upset

(45:52):
with it. Maybe over the courseof the day, you didn't believe that
had been called a strike or whateverthe case may be. But then I
also thought it was funny that thebroadcast team for the Yankees he got ejected
on a call third strike in theseventh inning of a game they were winning,
and he said, Oh, that'sa shame. Man's that's not what
you want. Out Here are alot of fans who paid to see Aaron

(46:13):
Judge hit the baseball. Well,they got him the whole day. It's
the seventh inning, there's only onemore at bat. You think the Yankees
are going to bat around and comeup to a spot again, which of
course they didn't. So yeah,I mean, it's interesting thing to say.
All he said was that's an incorrectcall with a curse word, and
you've been incorrect all day and theincorrect in both cases was a curse word.
That's all he said. And hesaid that he was as he was

(46:35):
walking away. Apparently the umpire respondedwith, you can't say I've been you
know, nonsense all day and heejected him. It's a little too sensitive.
I think I understand the cursing issomething they but prefer players didn't do
but he didn't turn around, getin his face and call him a name
or anything like that. Easy tolet that go. I think for the
umpire, he didn't. Yankees hada great weekend. Nonetheless, they also

(46:57):
won yesterday with Nestor Cortes on themound beating Tark Schooble of the Tigers.
A shortened game. Rain came andthey decided that's enough baseball for today.
Ended up winning a game without goingthe full nine. And now they get
the day off like the Astros,and we'll try to continue beating the Astros.
This is it. This is thelast of their meetings this season,

(47:17):
the first four war year, andI think everybody knows that the Astros didn't
win any of those games. Yeah. I mean, if people want to
make something of this one side orthe other, that's fine. It's so
far. Like I said in thefirst hour, I have long ago quit
looking at anything short of okay,are the Astros winning this game. I

(47:37):
don't care about the standings right now. I definitely don't care about whether or
not the Yankees or the Rangers orwhoever. I mean, I guess a
little bit about the Rangers just becauseof the division, but I'm not looking
at this as a playoff season rightnow because it's not. Yeah, the
thing that stood out to me yesterdayand it was what you're talking about,
what you are paying attention to.The Astros took a four to three lead

(47:59):
into a turn into the last twoinnings, gave up a run in the
eighth, gave up a run inthe ninth, and lost. The Rangers
went into what would be the lasttwo innings of their game down one,
homered in the ninth inning to tieit, scored in the tenth inning and
won it. I mean, that'show a team that's winning enough games to
stay at the top of the standingsdoes it. And that's how a team
that's staying at the bottom of thestandings does it. That's how this team

(48:21):
used to do it. It is, and it's just it's with a lot
of the same parts, almost allof the same parts. Erlander, Arigedty
Blanco, Gil Rodon and Stroman arethe starters expected to get the ball as
this season series comes to a conclusion, and like I said, they'll get
to the weekend in Detroit. We'llsee what happens with the rest of the
rotation. Didn't spend any time yettalking about the week that was for two

(48:45):
players tremendously impacted by the move thatwas made on Tuesday, JOSEA. Bray
is not going to be a partof this team for the foreseeable future.
That helped to create the opportunity longerterm for Joey Lo Perfido, and it
clearly created an opportunity for first baseJohn Singleton, and he definitely took advantage
of it. He's been one ofthe Astros' most productive hitters, literally as
the most RBI of anybody in thegames that were on this homestand the six

(49:08):
of them, three of his hitswent over the fence. The last of
his hits went over the fence togive them the lead in yesterday's game,
homered on the first pitch of thatat bat. He homered on the first
pitch of the bat that followed JoeyLoperfido's first ever hit. And I know
people are excited about getting new bloodand seeing what the future might hold,

(49:29):
so they can't quite see low Perfidofor who he has been and who he
likely will remain. Not a topprospect for a reason, I think I
tried my best to tell you whathe's been doing as a minor league hitter,
both this year and in previous years. I'm not sure anybody paid any
attention to it, and I wasn'tthe only one. But he strikes out
a lot. He doesn't make alot of contact. You said he would.

(49:51):
He got his four hits, andhe's far from looking like he's overmatched.
But the numbers are what they are. He stepped to the plate fifteen
times, bruck out seven of thosetimes. That's a lot. That's almost
the most in baseball. From apercentage standpoint, he has the fourth worst
strikeout percentage of any hitter in baseballor in the American League. Excuse me,

(50:12):
with at least fifteen plate appearances.I don't know that it'll continue quite
this alarmingly bad, but it isalarmingly bad. I don't want to crush
him for his attempt in the fieldin center field on the Josh Rojas triple
in front of him, which hemissed by five or six feet. Ball's
not gonna roll to the wall anywayat Minute May Park on a play like
that, I don't really mind goingafter it, but he was so far

(50:35):
from it. Probably the wrong thingto do. Kyle Tucker kept Rojas from
circling all of the bases. Butyou know low Perfito's here. That's great,
but as expected, he's not gonnaturn this season or team around.
He's another body you can put outthere on any given day. You don't
have Chas McCormick, and he's beenbad. You almost have to play Cabbage
or Dubon or Myers on a regularbase. Somebody's got to be out there.

(50:58):
You only have two other outfielders,Alvarez and Tucker, so it's clearly
a downturn. And when not enoughguys are producing like Tucker, and you
could probably say beyond Tucker and Altuve, definitely Payna. So that's three.
Three guys are having seasons that arecertainly acceptable and probably in each of their
three cases overall, are better thanyou would have expected it. If Altouve
had a few more hits with runnersin scoring position, I'd be fine.

(51:20):
If he had a few less hitsin other situations, and maybe he's only
hitting three ten, but maybe he'shitting two fifty with runners in scoring position
instead of almost zero. And youknow Jeremy Paynia has a lot of hits.
He's beat out a few infield hits. He's mattered. I actually think
he should be that in clean upstarting tomorrow, as you bump Bregman down
one or two or three spots inthe order, because you've got too many

(51:40):
other spots, six other spots inthe lineup that aren't Alvarez is having a
year less than expected. Diez ishaving a year less than expected. Any
outfielder you've had beyond Alvarez and Tuckera year less than expected. That's a
lot to overcome. And that againis the other part of what we've been
talking. We've been talking about thepitching so much. It is a team

(52:00):
effort, there's no question about andboth if there's only two parts of baseball,
and we dismiss fielding because it's it'sdefinitely been good enough and it's not
so much worse than last year.I don't think it has had much of
an impact, positively or negatively onwhat we've seen over the last two years.
With Jeremy Payne at shortstop, kindof the look of this defense versus
some elite defenses they had before that. The offense is down the from a

(52:22):
run scoring perspective, even though theyare one of the best hitting teams in
all of baseball if we go bythe archaic batting average number they are.
That's why we don't Astro's record iswhat at this point, Now it's twelve
and twenty two. Okay, Iwas just looking up so if they go
go ahead, Well, I wasjust looking up the record. Win the

(52:44):
Chronicle did the Tombstone headline back andover. Yeah, if they can go
three and eight over their next eleven, then it's Tombstone time. Nineteen and
thirty two was when that? Excuseme, I thought it was fifteen and
thirty. Well, that might havebeen a case. I'm just looking at
the like, I just put inHouston Astros, Tombstone headline and Google and
that's what came up. But you'reprobably right. I know at one point

(53:07):
they were that. But anyway,it's the reason I bring it. It's
going to take that kind of aturnaround to just make the postseason this year.
Yeah, go look at the bestteam in baseball this year. Tell
me what they're winning percentages and thensay that's the Astros the rest of the
way or else. That's what that'swhat it looks like right now. And

(53:28):
I don't think it's likely, Butwe can't sit here and see all the
players that are on it on thisteam that have done it before can't do
it again. But they keep blowingthe opportunity to get that going. How
about if we're sitting here today saying, well, they beat the Rockies in
a series, they beat the Guardiansin a series, a first place team,
and then they just beat the Marinersin a series, a first place
team. All right, Well,then they just won six out of their
last eight games. That's the streakthey've been talking about. That's the streak

(53:52):
that we've been talking about. That'sthe streak that has to happen, if
not more so for them to getback into this season. You have to
win six out of it. Yougotta win ten out of fourteen. You
gotta have a six game winning streak. You gotta have sweeps. And instead
they went three and three a minuteMaye Park, and they went five and
three over these eight games since theseason began. You'll see, like during

(54:12):
the football season last year, aboutweek six or seven, when I knew
who the Texans were, I said, Texans are going to the playoffs.
Every day show tweet. It wasthere every single day for two and a
half months because you could see ituntil the Astros really Crater, really really
Crater start tweeting that they're not goingto the postseason and maybe reverse. I
don't think I have. I justhappened. Starting the season over in Mexico
City. The Astros are five andthree. That's what I'm running with this

(54:34):
year. That's not bad. Itisn't bad, but it needs to be
better. That would have had youat the beginning, like the start of
the season, that would have hadyou leading the division. And look how
close they were to being six andtwo if you just win yesterday's game.
And what you said is that thatwould have been the case. They won
the series against Seattle, three straightseries win right on the line with six
outs to go, with a Bradytaking the eighth then Hater taking the ninth.

(54:57):
I guess the team that is abad offensive team and they did not
get it. This is brutal,all right. The A team continues here
on Sports Talk seven ninety. It'sa staple on this station only by the
way, every single Monday here onthe show The Good, the Bad,
and the Ugly here from over theweekend. We'll get to that in just
a second, but not before Itell you guys one more time about Prime
Way Federal Credit Union. Make surethat your checking account is working for you,

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not the other way around. Youwant to work for some big conglomerates
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is sign up with their easier,easy, user friendly, I should say,
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PRIMEWAYFCU dot com. That's PRIMEWAYFCU dotcom. Adam and Adam are so Houston,
Houston that it's weird to not bewearing shorts. Well, Barbi queuing

(56:50):
on Christmas Day to Adam Platton Adamswork on Sports Talk seven ninety. Now,
the good, good, the bad, that's my dead and the ugly
don't make me good. With theA Team, we'd signature segment time here

(57:13):
on the A Team each and everyweekday afternoon four fifteen, we hit you
with our signature segment on Mondays.That means the good, the bad,
and the ugly. And as theugly ac you have the bad. I
opened with the good and it wasagain I was thinking it was gonna be
the Astros take care of business againstthe Guardians take care of business over the

(57:34):
weekend, and well, all soundswell, well, the good is actually
something that hasn't happened yet, butwill happen unofficially on Thursday. Okay,
we already know that the Texans aregonna get a ten and seven or eleven
and six record against a certain seventeenopponents, several of those obviously repeats in

(57:55):
the division. But Thursday we'll findout who they are. Unofficially, the
NFL is going to release the scheduleon Thursday. They've announced that it's coming
out in May. There've already beenrumors and leaks that it's coming out on
Thursday, but it is, well, it's coming out on Thursday. The
Texans will be on primetime, meaningplaying under the lights a minimum of four

(58:16):
times. In my opinion, Ithink they are a near lock to be
on NBC twice, maybe three times. That's Sunday Night Football and the opener.
You look at the Kansas City Chiefsoptions for their opener, presuming they
will open the season on Thursday nighton Sunday Night Football on NBC on Thursday,

(58:40):
the Chiefs are going to play,and the Chiefs are going to get
to play at home. They wonthe Super Bowl last year. If you
forget now, Ma m kelsey wasback on the field celebrating with Travis again.
They're not gonna play the Raiders.They're not gonna play the Broncos.
And I know some people think,well maybe they'll play the Harballs, but

(59:01):
they're not gonna play any team intheir division. So you knock those three
out, you got five left.They have a game against the NFC at
their home park. They're not gonnaplay the Bucks in the opener. I
got a Baker Mayfield and Patrick Mahomes. It's the featured game to open up
the season. I don't believe.I guess it's possible, but I don't
believe it. So their other teamthat they play in the crossover is the

(59:25):
Saints. Ugh, I'm pretty sureDavid Carr's brothers team is not playing them
on opening night. Nobody wants tosee that crap or Spencer Rattler if he
beats out Derek Carr, which hecould. Okay, So that's two more
teams off. So who does itleave. It leaves the only team whose
quarterback beat Tom Brady ever in theAFC playoffs, Joe Burrows Bengals, the

(59:51):
team they most recently beat in theAFC playoffs, Lamar Jackson's Ravens last year's
AFC title game or the most peoplethink they're going to have to beat in
the last game of the AFC playoffsthis year, CJ Stroud's Texans while sitting
here in Houston, and all ofthe love I have for CJ. Because

(01:00:15):
I've gone on record as saying watchinghim play as a religious I love him,
I've heard it. Yeah, absolutely, man, crush all of that.
While that is the sexy go topick here in Houston. If you're
the NFL, you probably go withthe Ravens, don't you. I think
they're going to go with what isnext, and it's not no offense to

(01:00:37):
Lamar, who's the reigning MVP inthe NFL big plus on that side of
the ledger. I think the decisionis the Texans. And I said,
I think they're gonna They're definitely gonnaget a Sunday night football game. Obviously
you're they're gonna get a Thursday nightfootball game. It's possible they're playing on
Thanksgiving, but I seriously doubt it. You don't think they'll play them them
and the Cowboys. I don't.I'm just saying I doubt it. I

(01:00:59):
really don't have any intel on that. I just don't think that's going to
be the game for them. Mondaynight football, I think is a given
two. So if they play OpeningNight and they get a Thursday night game,
and they get a Monday game,and they get a Sunday game with
no flexes, that's for right there. Yep. And if you consider who
the Texans also on their side ofwho they need to play their three division
teams, I think it's reasonable oneof those games could be considered either against

(01:01:21):
the Jaguars or the colt At theonset of the we release the schedule,
that might be a game worth seeing. But they also play the Ravens and
the Bills, and the Dolphins andthe Lions at NRG Stadium this year,
all really high caliber Super Bowl thoughtteams. Road teams obviously the Chiefs,
Packers, and Vikings. Of note, I don't think the Aaron ro Foss

(01:01:45):
Diggs returned to Minneapolis again. Bothof his former teams are on their schedule.
One is at home, one ison the road. So yeah,
I think there's a real opportunity there. One other thing about the schedule,
I don't think a lot of peoplehave discussed yet, and I think we
will do it a lot more.On Thursday, I mentioned all these great
teams that they're playing. Well,they're playing the Bears and their brand new

(01:02:05):
quarterback, obviously, Caleb Williams,I assume will be the starter at whatever
point in the season they play them, barring injury. Playing the Patriots,
I think it's reasonable that Drake maywill be the starting quarterback for the Patriots.
Those are a couple of rookie quarterbacksthat the Texans hopefully can take advantage
of. I don't know what theother situations will look like, but they're
probably that's that's the limited amount.It's a big difference from experience and talent

(01:02:30):
versus what they faced a year ago. And when did you say, again,
you think it'll come out? It'scoming out on Thursday, Okay,
so I thought that's for sure,for sure, for sure. I mean,
I'm not announcing it, but it'scoming out on Thursday. You know
things, I think everybody knows things. I'm not trying to you don't know,
you know other things besides the things, because I don't know anything about

(01:02:50):
the schedule. I mean totally truthful. You know people who do know,
but I haven't asked them for anyinformation. Yeah, man, I believe
the schedule is going to be announcedon a television special the League' Zone network
on Thursday night. All Right,you ready for this? I'm ready.
The tandem of Daryl Morey and JamesHarden, in very different ways, just

(01:03:13):
the latest disappointment. Now technically they'renot a tandem anymore. In fact,
quite the opposite, because, asyou've heard many many times in other countries,
James Harden will never play for anorganization that Daryl Morey is a part
of because he's a big fat liar. That's what he said. But again,
for very different ways, or invery different ways, I should say,

(01:03:34):
just a bad weekend for these two. And if you factor in that
win, Harden led the Clippers totie that series against the Mavericks, and
he did. I mean it wasan efficient thirty three point game where he
dished out seven assists and he shotwell from the field, including from behind
the three point line where he waseighty percent in that game four of five.

(01:03:54):
Is a disappearing act the next twoto help lead them to a series
loss. If you're gonnaivehim credit forleading them to the tying game in that
series, which was Game four whenthey won at Dallas, No less,
they just came home, just absolutelycrapped the bed in Game five, and
then the Mavericks did what they didall series when things were going well,

(01:04:16):
they just took control and easily basicallywon Game six to win the series.
There's only ten players on the court, and I think everybody agreed when it
began the two best players in theseries both wear ugly Mavericks jerseys. If
you were watching Layton bost play inthe back, they were literally wearing the
ugliest Mavericks jerseys that have been created. Yeah, and they were awesome in
the second half of almost every game. Certainly in these two games, Kyrie

(01:04:39):
is a closer. He's proving atime and time again. And even though
many of the next best players inthe series were in theory Clippers, it
doesn't matter when their too are constantlyand overwhelmingly because Paul George was assistently is
the key though out playing your besttoo. Obviously, Kawhi Leonard basically was
either a non factory not playing orhurting the Clippers by playing. But you

(01:05:02):
can't look at James scoring twenty eight, twenty two, twenty one, thirty
three and shooting roughly fifty percent forthose four games, and then in Games
five. In game six, ashas almost always been the case in his
career series, later in the seriesit goes when it's turned into a best
of three or whatever it's turned intolate in games five or six or a

(01:05:26):
game seven, they didn't get toHe made twenty five percent of his shots.
He made two shots game fifteen assistsin the final game. But that's
just to make up for you notscoring well his last game. I don't
think he played bad basketball, buthe couldn't put the ball in the basket.
He couldn't shoot. He made sureZubats mattered. He was for six.
Yeah, he couldn't well. Hewas one for thirteen from behind the
three point line of the final threegames of the series, after making seventeen

(01:05:48):
threes in the first four games,made seven shots total, seven for twenty
eight. I don't care if you'regood at the rest of your game,
if you as one of the betterplayers on the team. And I'm not
saying he is. We used tobe, because he's not, because he
can't beat anybody off the dribble anymore, which is why his freak throws are
dramatically down because it's the playoffs.You cannot miss all to that many shots.

(01:06:10):
And even as I say Paul Georgewasn't good either, Paul George was
just slightly better than that each gameoffensively shooting the ball. He doesn't create
for his teammates. But your besttwo players did not have a great finish
of the series and you lost dramaticallyin both of those games. Yeah,
and the Clippers, and it's notgoing to get better next year. No,
they're done as a championship contender.They actually, I mean Kawi peaked
in Toronto, we just didn't knowit then. And he's reversal. He

(01:06:33):
played much of this season and gothurt late in the year. I mean
he even said it. He goesit's very frustrating that it happened now.
And Darryl, I mean, saywhat you all about Tyrese Maxion in theory
and all that. But if JoelEmbiid's not going to be healthy, which
doesn't think I don't think he's gonnaget healthier later in his career as a
big man. I just don't.I don't know what they're going to do

(01:06:55):
to make the Sixers a championship contenderin a conference that has the Boston Celtics
and you know everything else going on. They're lucky that Milwaukee kind of opened
the door for them. They openedthe door for other teams to replace them.
Yeah, but it is not gonnabe the Sixers. So we shall
see one more left. We'll flipthat on the other side and get you

(01:07:15):
the ugly and the good, thebad, the ugly here on Sports Talk
seven to ninety. The good isalways great over at Tom's Watch Bar.
No better place to enjoy downtown sportsthan at Downtown's ultimate sports bar, twelve
oh one Caroline Street. That's whereyou're gonna find Tom's Watch Bar, and
you can not miss it. Well, there's a big sign right there on
the corner of Carolina and Polk,and there's a huge outdoor seating area.

(01:07:39):
TV's all over the outside, andagain it's nothing but windows, so you
can see all the TVs inside aswell before you even set foot inside.
A couple of massive bars, greatexpansive area to enjoy whatever it is you
want to watch, whether it's baseball, hockey postseason, hoops postseason, or
anything else, it's on at Tom'sWatch Bar. Great things going on as

(01:07:59):
well when the Astros are playing athome. They will be doing so again
for the full week starting next Monday. Yeah, and so when you go
over there to Tom's Watch Bar,which is on the corner of Caroline and
Polk, just parking the Green Streetgarage and Tom's is going to validate your
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(01:08:20):
from the game courtesy of Tom's forfree. It's on the house just because
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(01:08:42):
going to the game. It's greatsetup. They've got great deals, as
Wex and I both mentioned, andif you want more details, they've got
a website, Tom'swatchbar dot com.Timing stop by Duban Fantastic Playboy Marisio Dubon.
This is Mariso Davan supports seven ninetyand the iHeartRadio, You're home for
the Astros. Try to put araps on the good, the bad,

(01:09:09):
and the ugly. Here on theflip side of the program today a little
after for four point thirty here onthe A team Dan, what's what's ugly
ugly is Junior Valentine yesterday's home plateumpire. Now, let me go ahead
and off the top say, Itry not to be the blame the umpire
guy. I really do, becauseI think that it's a dumb argument.
It has really no bearing on thegame. And also the other part of

(01:09:30):
it as well that I say allthat to say, it seems like he
has a little bit of a jonesagainst the Astros last year Dodger Stadium.
The ball call whatever it's a ball, it is what it is. It's
a judgment call. But aside fromthe balk call yesterday, which by the
way, that's not his call.That's either the second base or the first
base umpire. It's supposed to havethat. That's number one, number two,

(01:09:51):
his whole little ump show charade thathe had after the strike three call
on Yiner Diaz. And then therewas a pitch about an inning or too
late that looked like it was closerover the plate, and he called it
a ball, and Yiner just sayssomething to him, and he takes it
upon himself to do this whole littlelet me show you who the big man
is charade standing in front of Yinerand then getting back to the ball call

(01:10:14):
his little Joe don't even come outof the dugout little charade that he pulled
right there, Like there's a wayto be a professional, and there's a
way that you're doing the job.Guys, got a little bit of LDS
on his side if he's going tocontinue to do the job like this,
And clearly players don't respect him.You saw what Ryan Stanek did to him
last year. What's l Yes,I can't say it on air, I

(01:10:35):
can text it to you. Littleman syndrome in the middle of his body
is what it is. I really, man syndrome in the middle of his
body. Yeah, Dan didn't didn'twant to say it on the air.
So I'll let everybody that was goodabout Tom Brady last night, in other
words, many many, many manytimes, not about either of his former
tight ends. Quite the opposite.I think he was trying to prevent Joe

(01:10:58):
from getting ejected and I think Joe'shave come out anyway and gotten ejected.
That's really all I think that wasabout. He did balk unfortunately. I
know they don't call it all thetime, but that leg moves first.
It's again, I think the wholeidea of what the genesis of the balk
rule in and of itself needs tobe reconsidered with how many other ways you're

(01:11:19):
doing literally like you're doing it tentimes more on these fakes to other bases,
on these spin turns, like you'reactually trying to deceive the runner.
I don't know if Brian and Braveeven knew what he was doing, even
intentionally knew what he was doing,and it was so rapid it wasn't fooling
anybody. And the worst part ishe definitely wasn't trying some sort of pickoff

(01:11:42):
move that was going to succeed.He just threw over to first. It's
almost like you probably shouldn't even botherin that situation. Well, first of
all, the runner shouldn't have beenthere, since he shouldn't have hit a
guy with one out and nobody onin a one run game, but he
did because that's the way he's pitchedthis year, I mean umpars, many
of most of them. This year, it seems have been much worse than
he was behind the plate, andwe almost always only complain about those guys

(01:12:04):
behind the plate. The timing ofwhen it took place. Eighth inning,
one run game gets him into scoringposition. The next punch hit from the
Mariners got him home. But thenit's almost like we're not acknowledging how come
he ran home? Well, becausethe Astros play an outfielder who can't throw.

(01:12:25):
And that's why I mean, therunner wasn't even at third base.
The runner went back to second becausehe thought it might be caught. And
then Jake Myers I think he spedto the ball. I think he quickly
rushed to it, but I couldn'teven tell for sure, and I shouldn't
be questioning it. And then whenhe got there, the runner wasn't even
at third base, and many actacouldn't have been wind milling him home any
faster. And Jake Myers, Lollipopjust throw home the best he can do,

(01:12:46):
I mean, no fault of him, and that's just who he is.
And then it wasn't online either,it actually beat him there. Well,
of course it did the runner hadno business going except unfortunately, other
teams scout the Astros and when theymade some of the moves that Joe made
left him with that as his outfield, and that's where the game was lost.
There have been a bunch of MPshows this year. I think this
probably would qualify as another, butnot a huge reason why the Astros came

(01:13:10):
up on the short end of it. If he didn't balk, then it'd
probably be a bigger issue. Idon't care about the other theatrix. I
mean he did. I did enjoyJoe Espota with his recall of the same
umpire calling a back against the Astroslast year in LA and then smelling his
armpits afterward. You remember when hewent back over to second base to basically

(01:13:33):
put his well, don't we agreethat Stanik did do it right last year?
Like, don't we agree it wasa balk? We're just shocked that
it was. I don't think Stanikagreed. Well, I mean he's not
looking at the video immediately. Weare. Anytime you're going to ask me
that question, I'm going to askyou the same question in return, what's
the balk? That's what I waskind of getting at you know, the
deception of the runner and obviously themoving when you get off of the rubber.

(01:13:55):
There are certain ways to do it. Basically, that's what you have
to do first. When there's inflectionof leg while you're still on the rubber
and you don't go home, allthose things come into play. And that's
for the most part what each ofthese two bought calls. While different,
that's why they were called in themanner that they were. They were just
the timing of them was so horrific, and then the results that came after
were, you know, killers.Yeah, that's as unfortunate we Why is

(01:14:20):
it not the homeplay umpire's call,by the way, because I mean,
you're right there at home plate callingballs and strikes, and also to the
field umpire has a better look athis back leg. But what you're saying
is no home play umpires can callbacks, period, and that clearly is
not true. Shouldn't be their primarylook, No, it shouldn't be.
I mean, it's kind of likea line judge calling a whole ten yards

(01:14:42):
down the field. You're supposed tobe looking at the line of scrimmage.
I don't think it's like that atall. Because they literally never do it
right because they can't. They're lookingat something else. Now you're right in
theory, you're calling balls and strikes. But if that was the case,
then they would never call it andthey would never be allowed to call it.
And they call it all the time. You got three field umpire,
there's agree, But then why wouldthey not put that. They're never gonna

(01:15:02):
put that in place. Clearly,the home play umpire calls box unfortunately all
the time. Angel does it.Obviously the guy yesterday did it. I
get your point, but why whydo you think that they allow for it
if they shouldn't be doing it.I just don't think he has as good
a view of it as the secondbase, first base or third base umpire
do. If they call it,then obviously they saw something on the play.

(01:15:24):
I'll ride with it, but Imean, it's it's it's not even
just the balk call, Like Iget it, it's a judgment call.
You made the call, fine,whatever, but it's just his historyonics after
it about don't even come out ofthe dugout all of these other types of
things, like you made the call, like you know, stand up to
the music. There're eject him there'snothing to stand up to. F fine,

(01:15:45):
he's trying to. He told himout basically, I'm not. In
so many words, you're gone ifyou come out. Joe decided to stay
in the game. Did you thinkit was a ball last year with Stanik?
Since that was from the second baseperspective, just tag here. I'd
have to go back and look atthe video, but clearly standic, like
you said, did not think so, And I'm sure the demonstratively think so.
Did not think so. Ryan's Stanik'sscream of joy or displeasure legendary.

(01:16:11):
Oh, best, the best.I'm just seeing him down there this week
and Friday we could see him downthere on the field before the game,
and then obviously we got a goodlook at him yesterday. Yeah, I
missed that guy. I talked tohim on the on Deck show on Saturday
one of the Mariner's clubhouse and spentgood five minutes with him. How's he
doing in Seattle? Great? Great? But he misses Houston? Oh of
course. Yeah, it was onlythree years he was here, seemed like

(01:16:33):
longer. Well, as he pointedout in the interview, a lot of
really huge moments happened for him here. Got married, had a family and
got some hardware. He can go. All right, we will give away
some tickets next segment here on theA Team Sports Talk seven to ninety.
Now, before we tell you guysabout the best way to watch winning or
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(01:16:58):
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(01:17:41):
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(01:18:02):
proud sponsor of your Houston Astros.We now returned to Adam Clinton and Adam
Wexler on Sports. I noticed somethingduring the break that I didn't know about
on your formerly known as Twitter account, and it it made me laugh because

(01:18:25):
I think that even though we wantthis to die, and it probably will
eventually, especially if like the Texanswin both games, including this one this
season against the Titans, it's gonnabe the It'll go away unless the Oilers
slash Titans wear those stupid jerseys again. But a question was asked and you

(01:18:48):
caught it on camera about the blue. I'm just gonna call it that because
honestly, at this point, Idon't know what to refer to it as
I know what the Texans want youto refer to it as Houston Blue or
no h Town blue, right,that's what it's called. So what I
refer to it as in my commentaryon the post. What was your commentary?

(01:19:12):
Just out of curiosity the answer fromcalin Hanna mcnarro, and if the
Texans plan to wear the H Townblue jerseys versus the Titans, did you
did you find it? Did youfind her defensive? Or do you think
it was an act? I thinkthat's the gist of what I want to
get at. Uh her answer.I mean, I mean probably best to

(01:19:36):
I would have been best to havepeople hear it, wouldn't it. Yeah,
we can play it, don't worry. But I'm just asking you because
you were there there there was avariety of things coming to say yes we
are, and you're saying we caredefinitively and loudly about them, rather than
the colors themselves, which has beenthe whole gist of their desire to have

(01:19:58):
H Town Blue as a part ofor a common bigger part of their jerseys.
They're two different things, and that'swhat I think she's trying to say.
Give you question and answer here you'llrecognize both voices. I'm sure if
you guys asked the NFL that youcan wear the H Down blue when it
tightens your hair. Why would weWhy wouldn't It's a natural to Houston color.

(01:20:23):
It's a Houston color. But whatdoes it have to do with Tennessee?
When it asked talking about it,like put the uniform combos after we
get the schedule, so that'll that'swhen that will happen. So what she's
saying is trying to present that sameidea. And the question was even asked
that way by John McClain. Thisis a Houston color, Well, then

(01:20:46):
we're Houston every week. I couldput asked to wear them every week.
That's the gist of why we care. They probably wanted to, right,
we don't. We're trying to sellyou. Now you can debate it whether
you think that's really true or not. But we could wear against the Titans,
We could wear it against the holeskirt of that color. When she's
giving this answer, and he isher fault that Lulu makes a nice color

(01:21:08):
skirt, and he was wearing ahat. He had one of the hats
that apparently not everyone has been ableto find. Everybody wants it. Yeah,
And he also noted this, whichis I would assume it's true that
they have done such a tremendous volumeof sales that they're continuously working on making
sure everything is in stock. Butyeah, they the hats that were given

(01:21:28):
out to all the players today featuredthe new logo. The golf balls that
were used at the UH opening puttoff if you will. You could basically
buy a ball and everyone at thesame time, surrounding the hole on the
putting green for about thirty yards ortwenty five feet. Everyone at the same
time putted at the hole and threepeople got it in. Each of the

(01:21:49):
three of them won a prize.But it had the logo on it.
It was dotted all over the golfcourse today and I think as well received
as it was during the week ofrelease, now you're starting to see how
it really translates when you see peoplewearing it, and more and more people
are wearing it when you consider thetype of party they threw just to unveil
some jerseys. If they actually winit all, I mean, we've talked

(01:22:14):
about it, the Astros and theRockets a long time ago. This city's
gonna lose its mind, and Ihope it happens. I do. I've
never really rooted for that guy tohave a championship team, but I absolutely
want that to happen. I thinkit's rare that you do. Some teams
and cities are like, man,this guy meant a lot to why we

(01:22:35):
love this team, this family,maybe the ownership or whatever, But oftentimes
it's the other way. And Idon't think this family should be regarded in
anywhere nearer than negative light that BudAdams family should be to know, what
have they done? That's dastardly.Only art Odella was worse. Oh,
there's a few other own I mean, actually he wasn't because he let the
Cleveland Browns keep their name in likeness. Stay with me here before he hit

(01:22:56):
the top. When the Panthers winit all, they're not gonna say,
man, this was great for misterTepper. And even if they had done
it with the original expansion owner,mister Richardson, I would have said the
same thing. Either. In LasVegas it might be a little different,
just because they do love al well, they don't depending on which city you're
in, And that's what I'm saying. Yeah, plus his haircut. It's

(01:23:17):
okay you can have a bad haircut, it's not okay. You're an owner,
man, Not that haircut. Willthe people in arling Dallas, say
this was great for Jerry. No, they're gonna say one one. Remember,
they're going to say yeah, butthey're also going to say that they
won in spite of him. Thatwill be the narrative. He put the
team together, they won because ofhim. No, that's what he'll say.

(01:23:38):
Everybody else will be like, guys, you looked into it. Hey,
Steven and I put together a winner. Don't you forget it? Steven
and the monkeys, we put togethera winner. Okay, five o'clock hour
with more football at five conversation involvingthe Houston Texans, by the way,
when we come back, but notbefore we tell you, guys about joint
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(01:25:11):
lifelong Houston sports guys named Adham TalkingYour Teams series, Adam Clinton and Adam
Wexler are the A Team A.You're right at Brussel football five o'clock some

(01:25:33):
five o'clock football. Professional football inAmerica is a special game football at five
and yeah We've been talking about theTexans, but let's face it, a
guy who had a lot of successat their expense and others. To say

(01:25:56):
that Tom Brady got roasted last nightis probably like the mildest way to put
it. Yeah, Texans weren't abig enough thorn in his side or a
big enough accomplishment to trounce that theyeven made it into last night's roast.
A bunch of other teams did.They would have probably had to have said
this guy trailed to brock Osweiler athalftime. That's about as close as you
could get to the Texans really havinga one up on this guy. It

(01:26:16):
was a good idea for Tom ifit was something he wanted to do to
keep himself continuing to be relevant,keeps coming up with new ways to do
it. And initially he won superBowls to do it. Then he retired
and came out of retirement, thenhe retired again, decided that some family
issues would help keep him in thenews, decided to let Fox pay him

(01:26:41):
three hundred million dollars to talk footballon TV. He's done a lot of
things to say relevant and I'm surethere was a bunch of money that he
sent to a handful of charities withpeople that were there that came from last
night's massive audience. I'm looking forwardto the Netflix release that says this was
our most highly viewed live most ofall time on Netflix. You think,

(01:27:02):
I mean, what's what's its competition, right, because weren't I mean,
seriously, wasn't every single major roastbefore this on Comedy Central pretty much?
And again on a scale of this, there haven't been any There haven't been
any roasts on this scale anytime recently. They had all the heavy hitters from
a comedic standpoint, and even thoughthere weren't that many, and then his
teammates obviously got good writers for themost part, and when they went up

(01:27:26):
there, Julian Edelman, Rob Gronkowskiamong those to do so. Bill Belichick
was a welcome sign. You hada bunch of people who haven't been paying
attention for the last couple of weekswhile he's been out of work, and
any of his other regular team prettymuch, anytime Bill Belichick's been on TV
and it hasn't been a pre orpost game or pre or post practice interview,
he's been awesome. If it's afootball related interview, directly on site

(01:27:51):
at in Foxborough or at a gamethat he stinks it's the least of the
things he ever wants to do withhis life, and he showed it and
it was awful way to handle thingswith the but he won so much nobody
was going to do anything about it. Every other part of his TV career,
whether it's sitting down for an NFLNetwork interview, a long form sit
down with Nick Saban, parts offootball life, and most recently doing unreal

(01:28:15):
analysis with Pat McAfee's crew during theNFL Draft because he knows football, knows
how to analyze players. He mightnot have drafted the greatest players recently as
he got more and more power,but he certainly knew how to analyze them,
so it's all been good. Hewas great last night. A little
fun poked at him. Tom Bradyhad a comment about the ring doorbell footage
of a shirtless Belichick leaving a woman'shome. He made note of Belichick being

(01:28:40):
seventy three years old and probably shouldn'tstill be doing that anymore. Robert Kraft,
that was not the woman that heslept with while married. That was
his neighbor, so that was adifferent woman. They a bunch of them.
Gronk and Edelman and others had FoxboroughHigh jokes, like he would always
tell us, I got there's kidsover at Foxborough High can do better than

(01:29:00):
you, guys. Their Foxborough Highjokes back to him were only reason you
knows so much about Foxborough Highs becausehe was looking for dates referencing his age
versus the dates the ages of thewomen he's been with. I will just
say under said Leo's name made itin there last night as well, a
description of who Tom was most recentlywith Leo DiCaprio X. So we'll start

(01:29:25):
there. He got too she gottoo old for him, So we'll start
there. We'll start with the commentaryfrom our good friend Dana White, not
on the daist but in the crowd. Brought a couple of his fighters there
was given about ninety seconds worth ofcommentary. He said some things about Tom

(01:29:45):
Brady and so that kind of broughthim into the firing line. Andrew Schultz
was one of the other roasters,so he kind of tied UFC and Dana
White into Tom Brady and his formerwife with this little shot during the roast.
Oh that's why Dana's here so youcan learn how to Brazilian out of

(01:30:06):
half their purse. Again, ifyou're attending or you're the roast tea,
you're in the line of fire.So they both caught shots with that thought
that was pretty good. You getthe Michael Vick reference. Uh, they
compared Dana White to Michael Vick onlywith humans. Uh, maybe I'd have

(01:30:30):
to go back and rewatch, whichI'm happy to do. Ie putting them
in cages to fight. Yeah,I understand. I'm just making sure people
know the guy that he replaced andthus became famous, was Drew Bledsoe.
Lots of shots were taken. ItDrew for taking the hits that got him
out of the game. But DrewBledsoe had his moment at the mic as
well, and this is how hedecided he would roast Tom Brady. But

(01:30:51):
you know, you have more ringsthan I do. But I've experienced a
couple of things that you will neverexperience. The feeling of being the number
one overall draft pick in the NFLand a twenty eighth wedding anniversary. It
was yesterday. Peyton Manning came wereway way late in the show, the

(01:31:19):
second to last person out there.He was very good for the most part,
pretty clean. A lot of peoplecommented on the giants Peyton. I
think his joke was, we've playeda lot of golf together, gotten very
good at golf. My handicap issix point four and Tom's handicap is Eli
Manning's giants. Eli took to Twitterx platform earlier today after the roast and

(01:31:41):
he said, I thought about attendingthe roast of Tom Brady last night,
but I did not want to roasthim for a third time, which is
very good, So we'll save TomBrady. I only pulled one of his
for a last We'll hit you witha pair of Nikki glazers. I believe
came near the top of most peopleBull's rankings of who had the best performance
of the night. And she's prettygood at roasting, and she usually gets

(01:32:05):
roasted pretty severely and afterwards standpoint almostalways for the same reasons. I love
that. So we'll start with thecomment on Tom's business sense. Remember the
crypto investment and how it went.She wanted to make sure everybody was reminded

(01:32:25):
of that. Tom also lost thirtymillion dollars in crypto. Tom, how
did you fall for that? Imean even Kronk was like me, no,
that not real money. Like ofcourse Gronk was there. Kronk got
roasted more than Tom. He's dumbagain, almost almost always for the same
reason, reading the prompter, followingalong knowing like it was pretty consistent.

(01:32:49):
I think most people also liked thiscomment about Tom for a number of reasons,
pretty personal from from Nicky. Youwere tired, that you came back,
and then you were tired again.I mean, I get it.
It's hard to walk away from somethingthat's not your pregnant girlfriend. It's tough.
Okay, to be fair, hedid know she was pregnant. He

(01:33:11):
just thought she was getting fat andTom hates fat. I mean, do
you guys know about his diet program. It is so strict, but if
you follow it exactly as he does, you two can lose your family,
and seriously, you can lose somuch family. I love her again most
like you find the sweet spot withhim. We know what it was,

(01:33:31):
and that's why people kept going backto it over and over again. His
recent family issues is divorce. Allthose things not much much raunchier material than
delivering here today here on the eightiestalking about she had she was with a
her boyfriend of ten years. Butif Tom basically gave her the high sign,

(01:33:54):
she would do whatever. And I'mcleaning it up severely. The Kendrick
Drake Beef also commented on Tony Hinchcliffmixed that into his work. Tony killed
it. And the reason Tony wasso good is because he was like,
I don't know, not even twominutes. Well, he basically just kind
of walked on stage and went downthe line, rated everybody on it one

(01:34:16):
by one by one. He hadsomething for everybody. Told you I'd say
Brady for the finish, and therewas plenty of good stuff from him,
but we did mention. Kim Kardashianwas there, also, not a stage
person, but she got to themicrophone and gave her spiel, was booed
off stage and then went back toher seat. Well, she was booed
early, but she rallied. Okay, good good. This is what Tom

(01:34:36):
had to say about her kind ofovercoming her fears and being a part of
this. Yam kardash She thank youso much for being here. I know
Kim was terrified to be here tonight, not because of this, but because
her kids are home with their dad. He put his hand over his face

(01:34:59):
at after he said it, andshe was giving it look like okay,
all right, all right, I'lltake it. So I again, I
don't know the answer to this question. I'm seriously asking this, Whose idea
was this and how much did howmuch truth was there to the comment that
was made last night that Tom Brady, for lack of a better way of

(01:35:23):
putting it, beg to do thisor be a part of this, or
have this happened, you know,him being roasted, Well he was an
EP on the production. Okay,so that tells me a little bit.
Yeah, I mean it's it's hedecided he wanted to do this because again
and look at all the people thatagreed to be a part of it.
Yeah, you know you're gonna havelike the comics have to be a part
of it. They're the ones whoand the writers clearly, Look who else,

(01:35:45):
I mean, Robert Kraft was therethe battle between him and Belichick.
We didn't even give you one commentfrom Bill or Tom about how much they
hate each other, and it wasfull of that. And Kraft also roasted
Vladimir Putin and he took a well, I don't know if Bill ever drank
his shot. But the three ofthem bring Craft and or Gronk, and
the two of them took shots togetherand there was still bad blood, which
I get, I mean, Iget, but I also don't get.

(01:36:08):
Gronk took his shot out of aglass shot glass, and then he Gronk
spiked it and the glass went everything. I'm like, who is getting glass
fragments out of their cornea after hedid that? Because he's Gronk. He's
just a big meathead in every senseof the term. Just but again,
like Edelman's speech was pretty raunchy,Oh yeah, Gronk's was off the rails

(01:36:32):
at times, and then he triedto keep remind me, hey, I'm
just doing it the top of myhead when he kind of got lost on
the prompter. Gronk was underrated.I thought, I thought it was probably
the biggest downer. Yeah, yeah, he sucks, but he's he's been
affleck He's always sucked anyway. Yeah, it was a lot of fun.
But here's again again before we go. This was unique in that any big

(01:36:55):
time quarterback in NFL history could saythey want to do something like this,
even some of the more successful ones. It wouldn't have been the same.
It just the pop culture bleedover.In fifteen years, who's it gonna be
Pat Mahomes or CJ. Well,no, well we don't know that yet.
But look at what Pat Mahomes alreadyhas. Everybody knows his wife and

(01:37:17):
family and they're huge targets. Theywould not be off limits. Travis and
Taylor are a part of all this. Super Bowl Championships and MVPs are a
part of all this. His coach, You don't think he'd be good,
Like, there's a lot of thethings that you need are gonna be there,
and he's at the ultimate level ofpopularity, so fast? How long
is he gonna be there? TomBrady was the ultimate level of popularity in

(01:37:38):
the NFL for fifteen years. Mahomesis on his way. I don't want
to see that, and I hopethe Texans are a big reason why we
don't know You guys might not knowme, but I'm Jackson Mahomes. I'm
Pat's brother, and I, ohmy god, here we go. Kim
Kardashian being boot off stage has gotnothing on what people would do to that
guy. He might be the biggestbutt of all the jokes. You know

(01:37:58):
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(01:39:29):
com. Back to Adam Clinton andAdam Wexler the eighty That music means it's
time to I don't know, catchup on things we haven't talked about today
called in case you missed it.I don't know what's in here today,

(01:39:49):
Dan, but I don't know ifwe've missed it or not. I believe
somebody that used to be really goodat football joked about wanting to come back
and play for a team in Houston. But I'm sure we'll get to it
at some point. To get toit right now. JJ Watt at his
celebrity softball game over the weekend ConstellationField, said this of a possible comeback.
I mean, I told Jamiko lastyear, I said, don't call

(01:40:12):
unless you absolutely need it. Butif you ever do call, I'll be
there. He knows not the callunless he absolutely needs it. This is
the last year I'll tell him thatbecause I'm not going to keep training the
way I've been trading. But heknows that if he ever truly does need
it, I'll be there for him. But I don't anticipate that happened.
They got a very good crew,all right, a very good crew.
But earlier today wex you were outat the Texans Charity Golf tournament at River

(01:40:36):
Oaks, and Demiko of course askedabout that very thing. Yeah, I
love to hear JJ. Sandy's ready. I got his number ready to go
just in case he needed. JJlooks good, he's in shape, he's
ready to roll, So I mayneed to make that call. So I'm
happy that that is open from him. But you know, JJ's outstanding player,

(01:40:56):
man, He's been outstanding player fora long time in his league.
And you know, I'm proud ofhim for what he's able to do in
the community. Still reach it backand the people that he's touched here in
the city of Houston's house, standingto see the response and all the people
that showed up to support him thispast Saturday and go. Man, really
proud of JJ, all right.So do we see the retirement glass broken

(01:41:17):
by Dimico Ryans and the Texans thisyear and number ninety nine comes out of
the tunnel with the American flag everythingthat we've seen of him in the past,
and he is back to Rock NRGStadium. So they'd have to take
his red jacket out of retirement,right, Yeah, I think they'd go
retroactive with that. They had tobring down the red jacket. I want

(01:41:38):
to know how he's trying to tellus all this. I told him this
last year only if you really reallyneed me, Okay, So how about
like around October sixteenth, seventeenth eighteenthwhen the Texans put an acclaim for my
j Sanders, a former teammate ofJJ's in Arizona at defensive end. You

(01:42:00):
didn't need JJ then when you wereclaiming players like that who you promptly released
as soon as the season ended andhe won't be back. How about when
they put in a claim for DerekBarnett of the Eagles, who worked out
tremendously. Well, I love thatthis is getting talked about. It's good
fodder for everybody to consider. Andyeah, as if JJ's saying this and

(01:42:21):
at Tamiko as much as they mightbe joking about it. And it's clear
that JJ is not the size ofthe player he once was, no matter
how he's going through his workouts here. If he calls him tomorrow and says
we need you for eighteen weeks,the answer is no. If he calls
him in six months and there's fivegames left and they need him for that

(01:42:42):
run and the postseason, then maybethe answer is different. If he continues
to at least allow himself to bein the kind of shape it would take
to play some football. The JJWatt we once knew who was on the
field for nearly all the snaps wasdominating both inside and out. That player's
definitely gone. And remember some ofhis time in Arizona was spent inside because

(01:43:04):
he was still big enough and strongenough to handle that. While he was
being he was becoming less and lessspeedy to be as effective on the outside.
He could beat his guy with moves, but then what he wasn't going
to catch the quarterback anymore because hejust couldn't do that anymore. So for
a limited time period, I won'tclose the door on it, but the

(01:43:26):
odds are so out of any realmof I'm laying a wager on it that
he's coming back pure. It's stilla joke, but I'm okay with entertaining
it for a little while. He'sgetting insane money to sit on TV sets
for a very little time, relativelyspeaking. And if he were to ever
decide all right, I'm getting backinto it, it wouldn't be to play.

(01:43:46):
It'd beat a coach. Oh,he's never coaching, exactly, so
just move on. It's fun tothink about, and they know it.
JJ has always been good at this. I'm surprised there wasn't a Floria look
who's looking for attention again article today, but even if there was, I
probably wouldn't have irony, being that'sall he does. Yeah, some of
the you know, Dimiko said Icould call him right now and talking more

(01:44:09):
about JJ and getting ready for theseason. I asked Amiko about the fourth
preseason game because I thought we gota pretty good idea of what Nick thought
about it, and it wasn't verypositive because it changes their scheduling, it
changes how they prepare for the season. Sounded more like he thought it was
an ordeal than an asset, andTomiko, I presume was giving me his
honest opinion on it. I said, you know about the fourth preseason game,

(01:44:30):
how do you look that, Doyou value that or conversely, would
you rather not have it? Andhe said, it's a great opportunity for
some of the guys on the rosterto get reps. You get down to
the end of the camp and endof preseason and you're kind of running out
of reps because you only have threegames. How much of your starter's playing,
how much of the guys who wereactually fighting for spots forty through fifty
three and the sixteen practice squad spots. It does matter to him, and

(01:44:54):
that's how he made it sound.I asked him additionally how he thought it
might impact their desire to have practices, and I think that does depend a
little bit on who they play inthe preseason, which the teams kind of
decide and kind of put that ontheir own. And he said that after
the first preseason game against Chicago.So it was a wait and see on
it. Remember they had several scheduledlast year and ultimately did a little bit

(01:45:15):
less than they originally anticipated. Wealso know that Roger Goodell doesn't like the
preseason games either. Roger Goodell differentreason brought up last night during the roast,
Tom mentioned they spent twenty million dollarson an investigation to see what happened
there. Why didn't they just giveme the twenty million. I would have
told him I did it. Hewould actually said I would have told them

(01:45:38):
my effing did it. Because roast? Yes, all right, what else
do? All right? So let'sgo to the NBA. Tom Ball's own
Jimmy buckets Jimmy Butler. Could acontract extension be coming his way in Miami?
Well, if it's up to patRiley, he says, kind of
like the way that the Astros arehandling the situation with Kyle Tucker. We'll
talk about that next year, That'swhat he said. But also too available

(01:46:00):
ability could be a huge part ofthat, either through injury or just rest.
This year, Butler missed twenty sixpercent of the games I just this
year or as a heat member.As a heat we we missed twenty two
games. If you want to knowwhat twenty six percent of eighty two is,
But that's normal. Sixty sixty four, fifty seven, fifty two,

(01:46:23):
fifty eight number of games played byJimmy Butler the last five seasons as a
member of the Miami Heat. Sogranted not all of those were full eighty
two gamers. I love the factthat we've gotten consecutive I guess not consecutive
weeks, but I mean it wasmentioned last week when everything was going on
with Lebron, but consecutive weeks ofexamples of pat Riley basically being a down

(01:46:47):
in Miami. Like Lebron tried toget Eric Spolster fired after things weren't going
well early on in his tenure therein Miami, and pat Riley was like,
uhh, we're not doing that here. You might get your way everywhere
else in the world, including afterthis which he has. He's doing the
same thing with Jimmy Butler. You'renot going to dictate things here. And

(01:47:09):
he's the one that won out onthe Jimmy sweepstakes. The thing to know,
more importantly than anything else, inmy opinion about Butler two years ago,
averaged about twenty one points per gamein the regular season and then went
up to nearly twenty seven points agame of the postseason. Essentially did the
same thing last year. Also thisyear, he averaged zero point zero points

(01:47:30):
per game in the zero games thathe played in the postseason. Granted it
was a short series, but that'skind of important. And you mentioned availability.
I don't think what Jimmy said istrue. I'm glad he believes it.
And when he said if they ifwe played them and I were healthy,
then we would have beaten the Celtics, that's great confidence and great for
heat culture, which is something Ithink he brings tenfold. And they kind

(01:47:53):
of have to have. They're sunkwithout him, but are they sunk for
longer if they sink more money longterm into him? How old is he?
Again? It will be thirty fivethe next birthday, which is the
beginning of next season. All theseguys that I'm thinking, oh yeah,
they're thirty one, they're not PaulGeorge. Jimmy Butler first played NBA basketball

(01:48:14):
in twenty eleven. Jeez, we'reall getting old. We're all getting old,
all right. We will continue hereon the A Team Sports Talk seven
ninety, but not before we bothtell you guys about Tom's watch bar.
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(01:49:00):
hardwood or on the frozen pond,you can catch all that action at Tom's
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to Sports Talk seven ninety on thefree iHeartRadio app. It's all your music,
sports podcasts and talk free. Neversounded so good Back here on the
eight after five thirty. Here onSports Talk seven ninety, WEX and AC
here with you Dan Matthews as well. One thing we did not mention from

(01:50:06):
the availability prior to the golf tournamentearlier today, our conversation with both the
head coach and the owner of theteam owners Callan Hanna McNair, questions about
the situation that took place in Floridawith Tank Dell where he was shot and
is recovering, according to Aaron Wilson, a shot that went through into and

(01:50:29):
out of his leg while not catchinganything major, thus allowing for hopefully a
fairly quick recovery. Demiko Ryan,saying everything on the football side of recovery,
suggests that he will not miss anytime. Pressed a couple times on
what exactly do you mean, consideringthere's a rookie mini camp which he would
not be participating in but then OTA'scoming up a couple weeks right after that,

(01:50:51):
before the end of this month,and several more sessions before they let
them go essentially for the rest ofthe summer till camp begins. And he
never got specific on it, butto the point that it will not impact
his regular season, I think isat the very least the most fair way
to put it. But the ownersas well, we're asked about just the
situation in general, and they've thoughtabout it their player and they handle things

(01:51:13):
like this trying to avoid them,et cetera. Is what Calan Hannah had
to say about tech Dell. It'sfrightening, but you know, you just
try not to get in those situations, and sometimes it happens, and we're
just grateful that. I think,I believe no one was seriously hurt.
But it looks like Tank will makea full recovery. We saw him in
the office the other day and helooked good, in good spirits and so

(01:51:39):
but he'll have to rehab and getback to where he was. So when
you use part of the time whenyou do thought to him, what do
you think? What do you sayto him? How do you convey or
he's bought for him as well asconcerned and you want him to learn that's
kind of between us and take justwhat we talk about. We can't.
That's that's a hard situation. Ifhe is, it's a what do you

(01:52:00):
want him to learn in a situationlike that? Again, I think that
that stuff we just talk about privately, and you know, in any situation
in life, you're gonna learn something. Well, Kuncle from Fox twenty six
with those follow up questions, they'reasked the same thing of Damiico Rise.
He's had the same type of answerpersonal conversations. Yeah, us and him
when she says it's a or whenI guess Cal in this case says it's

(01:52:24):
to sit down in the office,it was probably hey man, what happened?
You know? Just to that's andI could see why they would respond
like that. But I mean,again, whether it's any fault of his
own, which it isn't clearly.I mean, he wasn't shooting the gun,
or even like if you want togo further and say, well you

(01:52:44):
shouldn't put himself in those situations,well, it depends on what the situation
is. But I get again,having said all that, especially when you're
coming back from an injury and they'reclearly going to have him be a big
part of what they're trying to accomplish. It's like, let's get all on
the same page here, you knowwhat I mean. And I don't know
what was said, but it's clearto me that that probably was a topic

(01:53:06):
of conversation. Like I don't knowhow it was said, but I would
assume it's like, Okay, let'smaybe if I were them initially, I
would want to know more about itbeyond what they do, and hopefully he
could share some of what exactly theexpectations were from his standpoint on what kind
of event this was going to be. Certainly nothing like what it turned out

(01:53:28):
to be. Yeah, I don'tthink it's I don't think we're dealing with
a situation where well, this wasbound to happen because of this, this
and this and this, which wealready knew about. I don't think it
was anything even close to that.I think it was just a It almost
could have happened to anybody who isthat age at that stage, for example,
just wants to He just went out, do you basically what happened?

(01:53:49):
He went to a party, howsimilar do you think this is to when
Kevin Porter Junior was in Was itin Miami when he was at a strip
club? Yeah? No, forthat well reason, it's still it was
a club, though I'm not sayingthat. I mean, sure, I
guess technically more bad things are proneto happen at strip clubs versus a nightclub.

(01:54:15):
Well, I mean, it doesn'tappear that Tank was involved in the
h disagreement which led to the shooting, which he happened to be if the
video is what we think it is, he was just so close to it
there was no way to get awayfrom it. Could have hit him differently,
or could have missed him entirely.And if you know, I think
you're talking about the KPJ. SterlingBrown incident where they basically, and I

(01:54:38):
don't know if it was their fault, but there were nobody else involved.
They got in a fight with abunch of people, right, and they
were in the fight. They werein the fight, They were the reason
the fight was a curt Tank wastrying to break this up, whatever the
disagreement was. And again I saidthat off the top of my head,
I could not remember what actually wentdown there. I just remember we were
all like U leave a bottle wascracked over his head, not like the

(01:55:00):
one that Ernie Johnson cracked over stuntmodel. Okay, different versus real bottle.
Yeah, yeah, what are youdoing messing with my friend? Yeah?
I assume there was a little chatabout that on Friday's show. I
think we might have skimmed this.So if you and I know it's come
up that there's broadcasting deals being putin place, so that we definitely talked
a lot about, and we hadtalked about it before we knew how deep

(01:55:24):
into likely landing the NBA NBC wouldbe, which might have meant a lesser
or non roll for TNT, whichthen clearly dominoes fall into where does inside
the NBA go if they go atall as an entity? And I had
suggested not even knowing the particulars oftheir contracts. Well, Charles Barkley can
essentially do whatever he wants if thishappens, because he said as much,

(01:55:45):
Yeah, triggers a clause in hiscontracting become a broadcasting free agent. And
Ernie Johnson has said, according toCharles, whatever happens, my home is
here. I have other jobs todo here, which I want to keep
doing and I'm sure there's a majorloyalty aspect for Ernie. He's been there
almost well forever for as far asanyone knows, that's been around for almost

(01:56:05):
fifty years worth of it, andhe would stay. So whatever version of
inside the NBA would be changed ifit literally just picked up and left and
went to another network. But ifyou get a new host who they have
had, remember for a few shows, not completely exactly the same, but
Adam Lefko has been on set asthe host with Canvas and Shaq and Charles

(01:56:28):
and Kenny and Jamal Crawford and othercombinations. I'm not saying it would automatically
be him, but I think ifthe Kenny, Shaq, Charles aspect remained,
you'd be fine. I believe Shaqhas said if he's not on a
show with Charles and Kenny, he'snot going to be on any show.
Yeah, now I've seen that,But I just and I think we'll be
fine if that happens. Well,I don't want the NBA and T and

(01:56:53):
T to go away. I willnot be fine if that, you know,
on no offense to Kenny, who'sreally good, and no offense to
Shaq who be because of who heworks with, I think brings a lot.
If Charles is still on it andthey find the right combination, Charles
can continue to make it work.It won't be as easy and it may
take some time, but he's stillthe overwhelming reason for good and bad knowledge

(01:57:15):
and lack of knowledge. Why wewatch who is again? Off the top
of your head, I know we'regoing to break, but just quickly,
who would be if they you know, NBA and TNT goes away, NBC
gets the package and Charles is goingto NBC. Let's just say that's the
scenario that unfolds. Who's the guythat's going to fill Ernie's shoes? And
people like might not really take thatseriously when I say that, But that

(01:57:39):
guy is who makes that work.He made them work, but he also
he kind of would know. Heknew when to get them to go and
get you, but he also knewwhen to get out of the way.
Who is that on NBC right now? Though? Oh, I don't think
there's anybody at NBC right now.I'm not saying you can fill those shoes,
but I'm saying who would be theguy that they would tap to try

(01:58:00):
somebody probably possibly too young, butsomebody probably much younger, that they have
hopes for being a big part oftheir network long after that show runs.
But the names are endless. Idon't I don't even want to hazard a
guess because nobody immediately jumps to mine. But I tell the people that are
there, that are in the moreprominent roles, I don't think any of
them put that bill, nor wouldthey necessarily want to. They have other

(01:58:23):
things. The people at NBC noware busy because the things that NBC does,
which aren't that many, they alldo all of them. Like Mike
Tarico has pulled in every direction becausehe's so good at everything. But I
wouldn't want to see him there.That's and I doubt that's what he wants
to do. I don't think MariaTaylor's ultimate job there on NBC is to
slide into that seat. That showwould be awful. What was one of

(01:58:45):
the biggest reasons why the turmoil andshe left? She was an NBA host,
h and the Rachel Nichols and all. That's that's what all blew up.
Well, let's just talk like let's, for example, say Charles Barkley
starts talking about fat women in SanAntonio. How's that gonna play with?
Well? Super button up up tight, Maria Tay? What about this?
Just the panelists? Like, Ithink Candice Parker's phenomenal and phenomenal with them,

(01:59:06):
but she's not posted Jack. No, but if she's on the show,
what difference doesn't make If Maria Taylor'salso on the show, it's for
the reason one reason at least you'rebringing up that's one of them. But
I mean, I would call himon it. I'm thinking as they should,
But I'm thinking strictly in the termsof hosting like Ernie does. Yeah,
again, there's a lot of peoplethat could do it, but nobody's

(01:59:28):
going to be perfect at it becausehe, frankly was just awesome. So
yeah, it's on the NBA atthe end of the day. Don't screw
this up, NBA. That's allwe're asking. No, no big deal,
All right? Final segment coming upnext here on a Monday edition of
The eighteen. The eighteen continues Caroland Justin Berlander. Basically, it was

(01:59:48):
reported give her take that he wentinto the clubhouse and told the astros to
get their bleeps out of their bleeps. I can't remember who part who looked
their chocolate out of their peanut butter. Yeah, yeah, basically I can't
remember who divulged that information. Wasit Alex Bregman, it was somebody said
it on the record that he basicallytold them that, Yeah, that's what

(02:00:10):
it was. What do you thinkhe's thinking since that moment, Because again,
if you do something like that,and you say something like that as
a quote, clubhouse leader, whatever, you better be keeping up your end
of the bargain. And he's donethat since that moment. But they haven't,
and he's the He's the next start. Though, and I say this

(02:00:30):
all the time about this sport.Definitely as opposed to the others, it's
just different. There's so many variables. The astros are aren't not playing hard,
The astros aren't not trying. Theyare. If this were basketball and
the effort is what would push youover the top, and often it does,

(02:00:51):
they wouldn't be doing this. Thiswouldn't be happening. I mean some
of the stuff Josh Hayter said,I'm not trying to do this. You
know, I did not execute thepiss. You can pitch. You can
question which pitch I threw sure,but if I don't execute that pitch,
the same thing's gonna happen. Hehappened to decide to throw a fastball by
him and it was right in theheart of the plate on two after completely

(02:01:12):
fooling him on the one pitch,And yeah, it looks even worse when
those are the results. For sure. Verlanders absolutely kept up his end of
the bargains coming off of his fineststart of the season, and that he
was able to get them all theway within six outs of the game being
over going seven to full. He'sonly giving up four runs over three starts.
That is a good sign. Iknow Framber's last outing was not as
strong as some of his others,but don't think that's something we're gonna see

(02:01:36):
constantly. Still got the ball downfor the most part, even with the
late homers, got those double playballs, and I think they're in very
very good shape in that regard.Hunter Brown's not likely to make thirty starts
this year, Spencer Ghetti at somepoint probably won't be a fixture in the
rotation, though he's coming off ofhis best start also, and Christian Haaber

(02:01:58):
returns in a comparable way to howValdez has again. I don't think his
last start was quite as bad asthe numbers of the runs were. Then
they're they're not gonna be there again, not going to be losing because of
their starting pitching. They didn't loseyesterday because of their starting pitching. And
Hunter Brown was the starter, it'dbe nice to get fifteen outs from him,
And I'm actually surprised that Joe wentto get him when he did.

(02:02:19):
With one runner on and one downin the fifth inning, I thought that
they would have him finish that inning. His pitch count was probably all right
to do so, since he hadnot too many problems in the third and
fourth inning, didn't have trouble withtwo of the relievers they went to.
They had trouble with three of theothers. One run apiece for Montero,
Obrau and Hater, And that'll turnopportunity for a like the win that they

(02:02:45):
got a couple of the wins.Let's say they got on this home stand
to win a game ten to nine, your first extra innings win the Keratini
two run pitch hit, two outhomer to get three homers from Singleton on
the home stand, the last ofwhich could have been. That's what hurts
about home yesterday's I think Singleton hitson other home runs, and they did
the things that are supposed to beThese are not just wins, but huge

(02:03:06):
momentum swinging carrying wins. But theyfound a way to not have it even
be a win. And again,four and two on the home stand versus
three and three is massive, youknow, being down five games in the
standings versus seven is massive, Beingten games under versus eight, all those
things. Look how many more gamesyou now have to win to overcome that?
Again, this streak that they keeptalking about being on the verge of

(02:03:28):
getting, they aren't. They've beenokay of late. They've won half of
their games in a week. Theywon five of their last eight, which
is fine, five and three sincethe start of the season in Mexico.
So you're going nowhere if you winfive of eight as a team that's still
ten games under five hundred. It'sjust at some point it isn't enough.
There isn't enough season left, andthey are kind of wasting some things.

(02:03:49):
I mean, Kyle Tucker is notgoing into free agency yet, but he's
producing another really good season. Andeven he got out of a reasonably long
slump an oh for plus ten,oh for fourteen for twelve. I believe
it was at some point, andagain maybe it's when they hit the road.
Jordan Alvarez is he'll be fine.It's just the timing of it.
With so many others being down,it's brought the whole offense down. They

(02:04:11):
shouldn't be winless, basically when theyscore four runs or less. They almost
never score four. They score threeor less far too often, and they
shouldn't be winning every game they scorefive or more, but there haven't been
very many of those. They shouldbe a team still capable of doing the
exact same things they were doing everyother year of this run, and their
pitching is capable, and it's almostback to full enough health that they should

(02:04:33):
be able to count on it.I think this week, if Javier returns,
that might be exactly where they are. Javier Valdez Blanco Verlander. That's
four fifths of their starting rotation.If Arraghetti's last start is a sign of
things, if herkites not far away, he actually did not throw an expected
side session or live VP on Sunday, will do so tomorrow. Not sure

(02:04:55):
what term to use. I don'tknow if it was a setback or not,
but that's his current schedule. Youknow, Well, the first two
games will largely determine the mood goinginto it, and that's really not fair
to him because it has nothing todo with him. But I'm anxious to
see Ronel Blanco in that environment becausethat's game three of this series. You're

(02:05:15):
in Yankee Stadium. Let's just saythe two teams split the first two games,
and it's on you to help winthat series in New York in the
Bronx with everything that comes with itand everything that he's gone through. I
just hope the Astros as an organizationas a team give him the chance to
make that a potentially special moment.But if they lose the first two games

(02:05:36):
of the series and it's not reallymattering, maybe he'll have his sixth consecutive
start to open the season by givingup fewer hits than innings pitch. But
who knows. He has been incredibleand that would be a really cool moment
for him. All Right, We'vehad a lot of cool moments today,
but our time is up, sowe will step aside. But when we

(02:05:56):
come back tomorrow at three o'clock.We'll have plenty more to get to in
the time. What are we drivingaway from the station today? WEX and
I We're gonna drive what we alwaysdrive, an elite vehicle from Classic Elite
Chevy sugar Land where they've got sixteenfive off of twenty twenty three Silverados.
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is out at Classic Elite Chevy Highwaysix, which means you have not one,
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Talk seven ninety cent, you inback at it again tomorrow for WEX for

(02:07:24):
Dan i'm ac. It is theA team here on Sports Talk seven ninety
When we come back tomorrow at threeo'clock, we'll have a lot to talk
about. But in the meantime,the Nightcap with Ross Viial coming up next
here on Sports Talk seven ninety

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