Seth Payne and Sean Pendergast go over the good and bad from the Astros taking two out of three from the New York Mets to open the season.
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00:00Astros take two out of three from the Mets this weekend.
00:02More good than bad, I would say, Seth.
00:05Not overly concerned about the lack of offensive production.
00:08This is one of those things, early in the year,
00:10unless you're the Yankees using torpedo bats,
00:12the pitching is typically ahead of the hitting.
00:15These torpedo bats, I wish I had never read anything about it
00:20other than the headlines,
00:21because it made it look at first
00:22like the Yankees were up to no good.
00:24They're playing these, they're using these bats
00:26that have more of the weight put towards
00:29an individual batter's sweet spot,
00:31so he gets more exit velocity and everything.
00:34But then you read into it and you realize,
00:35oh, there's multiple guys on multiple teams
00:37using them right now,
00:39and that they've been around since 2022.
00:42It just seems like this year,
00:43more players are adopting them.
00:45Plus, the nine home runs that they had in that game,
00:47Aaron Judge had three of them.
00:49He's playing with a normal bat.
00:50Yeah, yeah.
00:51So it's not, it's not the,
00:53I thought it was gonna hopefully be
00:54some kind of scandalous thing for the Yankees,
00:57but it turns out that, hey,
00:58it is a technological innovation that maybe,
01:01I'm surprised the Astros don't have any guys
01:03that we know of using it.
01:04I'm surprised they didn't.
01:04If Luno were still the GM,
01:06they'd have had these five years ago, the Astros.
01:08That's what they would have spent their,
01:09they would have spent their off time
01:10during the COVID hiatus creating new bats, you know?
01:13I thought they looked more like,
01:16people are saying they look like torpedoes.
01:18I think they look more like those juggling pins.
01:21Oh, yeah.
01:22Like the modified bowling pins that people juggle with,
01:25which is maybe a little bit bigger.
01:26Yeah.
01:27Torpedo bat's a cooler name though than juggling pin bat.
01:30That's true.
01:31You know, like.
01:33It's, it's.
01:34Yeah, the drunk clown at your party bats.
01:37Yeah.
01:37It's a torpedo bat does sound cooler.
01:39Less annoying.
01:40Yeah, the torpedo bat.
01:42Yeah, the nine home runs was a bit of a bat signal.
01:44Like, hold on.
01:44What's going on over in Yankee Stadium?
01:46I was actually,
01:47I was sitting in the sports book for that.
01:50They, like Nestor Cortez threw three pitches
01:52and gave up three home runs to start the game.
01:54It was the most surreal.
01:55And the, like the coolest thing was like,
01:57he was on the Yankees last year.
01:59They're doing this.
02:00I say the coolest thing, like I root for the Yankees.
02:02I'm like, no, no.
02:03But it was, it was kind of a fun thing
02:04to be around a bunch of other sports fans for, you know.
02:06If any of you saw the headlines,
02:08but didn't read or hear anything else about it,
02:10it's not illegal at all.
02:11It's completely within the rule book.
02:13And it's one of those things that you gotta,
02:15you gotta admit that it's brilliant
02:18because a lot of brilliant ideas immediately
02:21after you find out about them, you're like,
02:23oh, wait, why did nobody think of that?
02:25I don't know.
02:26I don't know why nobody thought of that.
02:27With all the analytics and all the former NASA scientists
02:30and whatnot that there are in baseball,
02:32it took until 2022 for this guy who at the time
02:35had been working as a, an analytics person
02:37with the Yankees, former MIT grad, came up with it.
02:41And players have kind of dabbled with it
02:43in the last few years,
02:44but sounds like a lot of them just don't quite,
02:47they don't like the feel of it at first.
02:48So they're not sold on it.
02:49I think that you made a point before the show.
02:52It feels like this is the kind of thing
02:53that Luno would have A, been on top of.
02:56He would have known all about it.
02:57A lot of the managers being interviewed this week
02:59have said like, I don't know, I kind of heard about it,
03:01but not really.
03:02So he would have known about it
03:03and then I think he would have sold it to his players.
03:05Oh yeah. Hardcore.
03:06Yep.
03:07Because there's that learning curve
03:08of you're trying a new bat.
03:09You probably start, probably not that good.
03:13When you start, you don't want to sacrifice
03:14a few weeks of preparation in the off season
03:16to get accustomed to a completely different feel of bat.
03:19Yeah, I feel like that was one of my prevailing feelings
03:23this weekend.
03:23I'm like, oh, this is an innovation
03:24that the Astros weren't on the cutting edge of.
03:26I'm like, oh, yeah, no, no disrespect to Dana Brown,
03:30but this is maybe a by-product of going back
03:32to with a GM who's got more of that,
03:33like old school gut feel scout to them.
03:36You know, we're not.
03:37I do hope, honestly, I hope that the effect is real
03:41and that despite every little annoying tweak
03:46and change they've made to the rules
03:48over the last 10 years to try to increase offense
03:50and pace of play, that if this one simple innovation
03:54is what really amps up offense in baseball,
03:57I'd be cool with it.
03:59But I also want my team to get on board.
04:00Damn it.
04:01Yeah, I don't want to get left behind.
04:03Especially when you're not scoring
04:05more than three runs on any given night.
04:08Six runs the first three games.
04:10You finally get your first extra base hit
04:12midway through the third game of the season.
04:14So that's not good.
04:15Let's start with the good, though.
04:16So good and bad from the Astros this weekend.
04:18I think the biggest thing,
04:20and regardless of what the record looked like
04:22at the end of the weekend,
04:23if you had told me that you're going to get a quality start
04:26out of Frambois Valdez, Hunter Brown, and Spencer Arrighetti
04:31I would have signed up for that,
04:33regardless of the record.
04:34This is a team where I think the pitching,
04:37especially if Lance McCullers had another decent,
04:40you know, another good day in Sugar Land.
04:42We'll put him off to the side.
04:43But these three guys, and especially Seth Arrighetti,
04:47because you're already counting on Frambois Valdez
04:49and Hunter Brown to be what they were last year.
04:51That's not to negotiate what they were last season.
04:55For Hunter from like late May on, for Frambois all year,
05:00you have to have that for them to do
05:01what you want them to do this year.
05:04One outing out of Spencer Arrighetti,
05:06but it's against a good team,
05:07and it's building off of what he did
05:10the second half of last season.
05:12That to me is the most encouraging thing from the weekend,
05:14is Spencer Arrighetti's six innings
05:18of really efficient baseball on Saturday.
05:20That's a huge development if it continues for this team.
05:22And it was even better than it looked on paper,
05:26where he let up a run,
05:27but that was in a weird sequence of events
05:30that didn't have as much to do with his pitching.
05:32Well, you know what, no, I take that.
05:33I mean, he walked Jose Siri.
05:35Jose Siri's walked like one time in his career.
05:37So Jose Siri walks, then he steals second,
05:40but Arrighetti had made a throw to pick off Jose Siri,
05:45but Brendan Rodgers just couldn't handle it.
05:47It dropped out of his glove.
05:48Then Siri gets the third on a tag up,
05:53and then Arrighetti, just in a mental bloop,
05:57gets a grounder, turns and tries to hold Siri on third base,
06:01but then turns back to first
06:02and just lazily lobs it up to Christian Walker,
06:05and it gives time for Jose Siri to get home.
06:08That's, it's his mistake, and he's gotta own it,
06:10except it's gotta, it sucks that it's,
06:12it sucks that it's a reflection on his pitching
06:14when it comes to the stats,
06:15when it's more of a mental error than anything else.
06:17Yeah, but you're right, the eye test,
06:18I mean, that's how the Mets had to go score a run.
06:20You know, like they needed that to score a run again.
06:23Oh yeah, he maneuvered,
06:24Siri just maneuvered his way around the bases.
06:27Very effective, like it was impressive.
06:28It was a, I love Jose Siri in the way that you love,
06:34the kid that's always in detention,
06:36but he's got a glint in his eyes, so you can't.
06:38It's a good kid.
06:39You just can't even get mad at him
06:40as you're sending him to detention.
06:41Yeah, yeah.
06:42The detention, the detention monitor loves him, you know,
06:44as a, oh, Siri, stop messing around back there,
06:48you silly guy.
06:49Yeah.
06:50But I don't like it when he does it to the Astros.
06:52No.
06:53I didn't like it when he was doing it to the Astros
06:55as a player on the Astros,
06:56but I also, like when he does classic Jose Siri things,
07:00had a great inning, and then at the bottom of that inning,
07:02bobbled the, bobbled the yard on Alvarez, RBI,
07:05and it allowed Paredes to come home.
07:06The life of Jose Siri, man.
07:07Here is Spencer Arrighetti with John Smoltz
07:10after the game, talking about why is he,
07:12why is he different now than he was
07:15when he came up early last season?
07:17I attribute it to a couple of things,
07:19maybe a change in mentality, a shift in my focus,
07:22maybe taking it away from the stuff model
07:24and kind of just trying to go out there
07:25and really compete my nuts off every time I take the ball.
07:28I feel like that's really the biggest thing,
07:30and then, like you said,
07:31just kind of changing the attack plan a little bit,
07:33switching the mix up,
07:33and just not ever being too predictable.
07:36Compete my nuts off.
07:38That's all we're all trying to do, man.
07:39We're all just trying to compete our nuts off every day.
07:41RBI, best in the world,
07:43and then underneath, competing our nuts off.
07:46C-O-N-O, compete our nuts off.
07:50Kono.
07:51Dude, by the end of every show,
07:52I want to be at gelding, damn it.
07:54That's right.
07:55Yes, yes.
07:56Sacrificed his manhood for that show.
07:57That's it, man.
07:58I'm hoping to roll him back by tomorrow morning.
08:00Castrate me in the H, man.
08:02Castrate me in the H.
08:03Yeah, Arrighetti, he had a good interview,
08:07I think it was with Matt Kawahara this summer,
08:10or during spring training,
08:13about this last year where he realized,
08:15okay, I got all this fun stuff,
08:19and in the minors, it was great
08:21to really kind of just be cutesy with people,
08:24and then you get to the majors,
08:24and you realize, oh, these guys will feast on that,
08:27so you just got to be more aggressive.
08:28He's one of those examples, I guess, Seth,
08:31if we're trying to,
08:32if we're doing a referendum here
08:34on Dana Brown's aggressiveness
08:35in bringing young guys up, right?
08:37Dana Brown is more aggressive than his predecessors
08:40in allowing young guys to get to the majors.
08:42Now, last year, it was out of necessity.
08:43You had all those injuries in the starting rotation,
08:46so the plan, I don't think,
08:47was to call Spencer Arrighetti up from Sugar Land
08:50as early in the season as they did,
08:51but they had to.
08:52They needed arms.
08:53They had to feel the starting rotation.
08:55The way he's progressed,
08:58I think the plan was probably for him
08:59to do what he did last year at Sugar Land,
09:01not do it on the big league club,
09:03and obviously now, the early returns,
09:06both in the second half of last season,
09:08and now, obviously, just one start this season,
09:10but early on, is that that was good for him.
09:14That was a overall,
09:16it was done in an instance where you didn't want to do it.
09:19It was done out of a triage situation
09:22where you just needed arms,
09:23and early on, you're like,
09:25sure, I don't know if this is good for this kid.
09:26I mean, he's having games
09:28where he's given up seven runs in an inning and a third,
09:31but it clicked for him eventually.
09:34That was a good learning experience for him
09:36doing it at the big league level.
09:38I thought, in terms of clicking
09:40and in an early season game
09:42where the offense hasn't been that good,
09:44the most promising thing was that,
09:46all right, Yordan starts off O for 12,
09:49or O for 10.
09:50He was O for 10 in his first 10 play appearances.
09:55He had three walks and a sack fly,
09:57but he has not been vintage Yordan,
09:59but then on a day where this damn Griffin Canning,
10:03he had the 7.5 career ERA versus the Astros.
10:07He had one of the worst ERAs in baseball all last year,
10:10is two out of three pitches throwing sliders,
10:14sliders, sliders.
10:15Yordan, in the previous at-bat,
10:17before his go-ahead RBI,
10:20he just flailed at a slider in the dirt,
10:24but he adjusted, waited on a misplaced slider,
10:28and ends up with a really hard hit double to center field,
10:32and that's the go-ahead run.
10:33The fact that they showed way more plate discipline
10:38through these first three games.
10:39They walked a bunch.
10:41This is a team that walked the fewest walks
10:44in Major League Baseball last year.
10:46They do look very much like a team that's getting back
10:50to what used to be their bread and butter,
10:51which is incredible judgment at the plate.
10:52Yeah, I think Christian Walker.
10:54Paredes, I love that Paredes has a 1.11 batting average
10:57and a 3.33 on base percentage.
11:00Yeah, yeah.
11:02He's not hitting the ball all that well,
11:04but man, he is finding a way to get on base.
11:07That was his calling card coming here
11:09was him and Christian Walker both.
11:11Little patience at the plate.
11:12That RBI, Yordan's RBI alone.
11:14If you get Altuve and Paredes on base,
11:16and there you go.
11:18Get Yordan some traffic to work with.
11:20Yep.
11:21Not worried about Christian Walker,
11:22even though the batting average doesn't reflect it.
11:24Man, he's hitting the ball hard quite a bit.
11:26He was, yeah.
11:27I think McTaggart's article said he had,
11:30he's already had four hits with an exit velocity,
11:34which there were only two Astros
11:36that had four or more exit velocity hits
11:39that hard all last season.
11:41Yep.
11:41And they're like, yeah, it matches the eyeball test.
11:43Every one, it seems like every one of Christian Walker's outs
11:46has been just a rocket.
11:47Yeah.
11:48With a little bit of bad luck.
11:49Yeah, there's, they only scored six runs,
11:51and it's probably easier to have takes like this
11:53when you win two of those games.
11:54Yeah.
11:55And you're two and one.
11:56But like, you know, like Pena hit the big home run
11:58to kind of, to break the seal on Saturday.
12:00He's looked more disciplined at the plate this year.
12:03Like, they just, it sounds weird to say this
12:05after a weekend where they scored,
12:07on average, two runs a game.
12:09But I'm encouraged by the level of professionalism
12:12and patience and discipline that I'm seeing
12:14from the key guys in the lineup there.
12:16You know?
12:17Yeah, we've seen that from both Christian Walker
12:18and Paredes already.
12:20Yeah.
12:20They've performed as advertised at the plate.
12:25Stattner and Seth will tell you
12:26that Christian Walker's expected batting average
12:29right now is 366.
12:30Yeah, he's hit the ball hard a ton.
12:31So a lot of those hard hits, he's just had bad luck.
12:33Yeah.
12:34He's our new Kyle Tucker.
12:34That's it, man.
12:35Kyle Tucker, who every year, seemingly,
12:36starts off with really bad luck
12:38and the expected batting average is way higher.
12:42Christian Walker is that version this year.
12:44Yeah, it all catches up at some point.
12:46And you'll-
12:46Kyle Tucker, by the way, hitting 250 now.
12:48Oh, is he really?
12:49Yeah, good weekend.
12:50Okay, I saw Bregman's hitting 250 also
12:52for the Red Sox.
12:54Yeah, and Tucker, I mean, Tucker,
12:55for those of you who weren't paying attention
12:57to our schadenfreude updates,
12:59Tucker started off really bad.
13:01But this weekend, he was four for eight,
13:03two home runs, five RBIs.
13:05Oh, he hit a couple bombs, huh?
13:06Okay, yeah.
13:07Say, you know, I was a little distracted.
13:09I put my pettiness on the back burner.
13:11I gotta get my-
13:13Well, I was petty as well.
13:14That's one of them to be, yeah.
13:15Yeah.
13:16We need one of those.
13:17I was like my very puritanical grandparents.
13:19Very pious, but very angry all the time.
13:22Yeah.
13:23Their anger was what God wanted of them.
13:26Yes.
13:27That's right.
13:27That's what I did.
13:28I channeled Wes and Doris this weekend.
13:29Good, good, good.
13:31So, there you go.
13:32So, two and one, and the offense not great.
13:35San Francisco coming to town the next three days.
13:38So, we get to say hi to our old friend, Justin Verlander,
13:41over the next couple of days here.
13:43That'll be fun.