Astros get swept by O's in a brutal peformance over the weekend

Summary

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Payne & Pendergast — Astros Swept by Orioles: Brutal Weekend Breakdown

Date: July 20, 2026
Hosts: Sean Pendergast & Seth Payne (with Cole Thompson)
Main Theme: The Astros’ disappointing sweep at the hands of the Orioles, exposing deeper issues of leadership, motivation, injuries, inept roster decisions, and whether change is needed at the managerial level.

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Episode Overview

The Payne & Pendergast crew returns on a frustrated Monday, unpacking the Houston Astros’ ugly weekend sweep by the Baltimore Orioles. With the team now slipping further below .500 and looking lost both on the field and in spirit, the guys dissect mounting evidence of a club that’s lost its identity—questioning leadership, player attitudes, front office moves, and especially the fit of manager Joe Espada. Is the Astros’ golden era truly over? Should the team reset instead of making more short-term moves? Hard-hitting opinions fly as Sean, Seth, and Cole dig into every aspect of the Astros’ malaise.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The “School Play” Season — Opening Reaction

Timestamps: 01:39–03:06

• Analogy for 2026’s Sadness: Seth likens watching the Astros to being stuck at a bad school play, where “you know it's going to suck” but hope things might turn around. Instead, every act (series) gets more disappointing.

  • Seth (02:39): “This whole season has felt like you're at a school play, you know it's going to suck... there's very few guys to lift them up.”

• Lack of Energy & Identity: Comparing current players unfavorably to past “golden era” Astros; the team lacks hunger, edge, and identity.

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2. Critical Weekend Plays & Lack of Fundamentals

Timestamps: 03:52–06:13

• Baffling Mistakes: Sean highlights two back-to-back mental breakdowns in extra innings:

  • Yainer Diaz failed to cover home as a run scored “strolling back to the dugout like it's the end of the inning.”
    Sean (05:04): “Just a complete lackadaisical sense, unawareness, lack of urgency. Completely out to lunch.”
  • Zach Dezenzo struck out to end the game on a pitch that bounced away but didn’t even run to first. Seth (05:46): “He moped his way towards the dugout as the catcher is scrambling to get the ball.”

• Signs of a Team Without Direction:

  • Both hosts repeatedly point to these mental lapses as a symptom of a group not run with accountability or focus.

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3. Does Anyone Even Care? — The Leadership Vacuum

Timestamps: 06:34–08:14

• Old-School Critiques Resurface: Seth calls out the team’s “softness,” lamenting a roster full of players who “don’t want it enough.”

  • Seth (06:54): “These guys don’t care... not cut from the same cloth.”
  • Questions if manager Joe Espada has lost the clubhouse (“should he be the manager right now, not just at the end of the year?”)

• Front Office Flounders: Sean and Seth agree: with the window closing, make smart choices—don’t trade away precious prospects for short-term, mediocre help.

  • Sean (08:00): “Let’s recognize for what it is that you’re running on fumes here... nothing about this baseball team right now makes you feel like they’ve actually got the ability to do anything impressive.”

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4. Historical Comparison: Reality Checks from Recent Seasons

Timestamps: 08:14–09:24

• Broken Patterns: Sean reminds listeners the Astros had also stumbled out of the gate the last two years, but turned it around by midseason. This time, “they’re going the wrong way.”
  • Previous seasons: Bad starts but progress by game 100.
    Sean (09:24): “They are 79 and 94 since [last July’s] sweep of the Dodgers. My point is: previous two seasons, they turned it around by the hundred-game mark. They’re going the wrong way this time.”

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5. Front Office Mess: The Failed Pitching Additions

Timestamps: 09:35–14:49

• Poor Talent Evaluation: Seth and Cole mock Dana Brown’s moves to bolster the rotation—six new pitchers brought in this year, most already DFA’d or not good enough for the roster.
  • Seth (10:15): “What the hell are you guys doing? You can’t even evaluate your own guys.”
• Farm System Drain:
  • Cole (10:42/11:46): “You already have the 30th ranked farm system in baseball... you’re trading away assets when, let’s be real, the window of being a legit contender is closed.”

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6. Culture Crash: “Spoiled Prep School Kids” Metaphor

Timestamps: 12:00–12:59

• Imposter Syndrome: Seth savages the lineup for feeling entitled to success based on past heroes’ achievements. “They’re all wearing the logo of a bunch of guys who did things completely differently... walking around in letters like imposters.”

  • Seth (12:10): “It feels like a bunch of spoiled brat, like prep school kids... their daddies are rich and they wear this blazer that has an Astros logo on it and they feel like I'm a Houston Astro, we always win.”
  • Laments the absence of past clubhouse standards: “Guys like George Springer or Alex Bregman... their spirit and the way they play baseball out there is just not nearly the same.”

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7. Managerial Pressure: Is Espada the Right Guy?

Timestamps: 13:14–18:16

• Sympathy for Dana Brown, Not Espada: Sean points out that Brown inherited problems, but still, “no excuse” for such poor player acquisitions.
• Yainer & Defensive Follies: More mistakes over the weekend, including Yainer’s errant throw and brainless base-running.
• Espada’s Leadership Style Debated:
  • Seth: “I don’t need managers to be yellers, but I don’t sense any standard anywhere on the team.”
  • “Would this be happening on Dusty Baker’s watch?”
    Sean (15:30): “Would this be happening under Dusty Baker’s watch?”
• Philosophy Gap:
  • Joe Espada criticized as overly old-school and in love with “small ball,” pinch-running for power hitters, and questionable strategic maneuvers.

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8. The Team’s Mentality & Emotional Disconnect

Timestamps: 16:34–17:53

• Comparisons to David Culley: A text compares Espada’s “positivity” to David Culley’s failed Texans tenure.

  • Sean: Elements of the comp are fair, but Espada isn’t totally unfit like Culley; the real problem is his “old-school” obsession, especially for a team lacking talent.

  • Seth (15:50): “The difference was... there was a lot of player leadership. And by leadership, I mean just a certain standard.”

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9. Texans Camp Teaser and Wrap-Up

Timestamps: 19:59+

• With Astros venting winding down, the guys tease their upcoming Texans training camp coverage and move on to football topics.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Seth Payne (06:54): “These guys don’t care... not cut from the same cloth.”
• Sean Pendergast (05:04): “Just a complete lackadaisical sense, unawareness, lack of urgency. Completely out to lunch.”
• Seth Payne (12:10): “It feels like a bunch of little spoiled brat, like prep school kids... [who think] I'm a Houston Astro, we always win baseball.”
• Sean Pendergast (08:00): “Let’s recognize for what it is that you’re running on fumes here.”
• Sean Pendergast (09:24): “They’re going the wrong way this time.”
• Cole Thompson (10:42): “You already have the 30th ranked bunch farm system in baseball.”
• Seth Payne (13:15): “I remember that feeling... when my forecast sucked for the month and you go into your staff meeting with the CEO... just trying to come up with something that makes them feel good.”
• Seth Payne (16:34): “Would you guys be mad at this comp... Espada reminds me of David Culley—only wants to talk about the positives.”

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Segment Timestamps (Highlights)

• 01:39 — Opening banter & school play analogy
• 03:52 — Key lazy plays: Yainer Diaz/Dezenzo mental errors
• 06:34 — Old-school takes, “they don’t care”
• 08:14 — Failed midseason turnarounds
• 10:15 — Front office failures with pitchers
• 12:00 — “Spoiled prep school kids” metaphor
• 15:30 — Would this happen under Dusty? Joe Espada debate
• 16:34 — Text comparison: Espada to David Culley
• 19:59 — End of Astros rant; transition to Texans camp preview

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Final Thoughts

This episode crackles with frustration and sharp analysis, as the crew lays out a comprehensive case that the 2026 Astros are rudderless, underachieving, and possibly facing the end of their competitive window. No punches are pulled, with blame spread from the dugout to the front office and the players themselves. If you need a gut-check of where the Astros stand post-sweep—and what hard questions Houston should be asking—this is your cathartic listen.

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Transcript

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[Cole Thompson]

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[Sean Pendergast]

Lemonade. Oh nuts.

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[Seth Payne]

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[Seth Payne]

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[Sean Pendergast]

That's digitallocalads.com okay people, line starts. Sports Radio 610 presents Seth Payne and Sean Pendergast.

[Seth Payne]

We coming to eighth time. Let's get the work in man. Let go.

[Sean Pendergast]

Great day. Great day. Oh, give me some juice, baby. Oh yeah.

[Commercial Announcer 2]

Let's do it.

[Sean Pendergast]

Hey, what's happening everybody? Happy Monday to all of you. Nice to be with you. Appreciate you getting up with us. Woo. We are with you till 10:00am this morning. Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Trade deadlines coming up.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. Trade deadline's coming up. Yeah. I'm Sean Pendergast. He is Seth Payne. Cole Thompson in with us again today. So looking forward to four hours of good chatter with you guys here. Normally on if this were a weekday, for example tomorrow. Yeah, we've got people that are that have eyes on the Astros game the night before. So when we come in we normally bump in with Todd Callis's final call of game the night before. And if we were to do that today, I would imagine it'd be something of like, well the Astros lose again. They get swept coming out of the break and blummer they've fallen below that plateau they were at at 5 games under 507 games these lofty purchase.

[Seth Payne]

You know what the altitude was getting to me, Sean, it's nice to be back down below sea level right down there in Death Valley.

[Sean Pendergast]

You felt a little fatigued when they were only three games under.500.

[Seth Payne]

It's already, it's almost. It's like, it's. This whole season has felt like you're, you're at a school play, you know where you like it's going to suck

[Cole Thompson]

mission at this point.

[Seth Payne]

What's that?

[Cole Thompson]

Are we at intermission at this point?

[Seth Payne]

No. Yeah, I guess so. The intermission would be like the. And you're wondering like, I wonder if my kid will know that I don't go back in there.

[Cole Thompson]

Or are we at the start of the second act where we heard that first song? It's like, you know what? This ain't worth it.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, this was, this was the first song this week of the second act.

[Seth Payne]

Like, I guess, I guess they're trying. Some of these kids didn't learn their lines. Yiner. Diaz. Yiner would be the kid in the school play that just flat out is botching all the lines and everything. Yeah, there's just, there's very few guys to lift them up, you know.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yes, it's.

[Seth Payne]

They're in a Gwyneth Paltrow in the bunch.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, they, they are. They're in a bad way right now, man. And the, you know, the injuries hit again this weekend with Pena and not like Christian Walker is any great shakes right now or anything like that, but he's still better than probably whatever you got backing him up.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, it's.

[Sean Pendergast]

It's a bad time right now. And, and so, so Happy Monday, everybody.

[Seth Payne]

Don't worry. It's a, it's a five game series, right? Is.

[Cole Thompson]

It.

[Seth Payne]

Is. Yeah. We got more of this.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. Yep, yep. We got the Marlins coming to town tonight. So I. Oh, okay.

[Seth Payne]

Nevermind.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, so I said. So I said this. I said this on Saturday after the game. I was at the game on Friday, so that was fun. They were up 2 to 1 for most of the day and Peter Lambert had another great game pitching. And then Brian King, who's no longer on the team, came in and did what he does, did what he's been doing the last five or six times he's come out there. He spit the bit. And then on Saturday, to me, to me on Saturday, these were plays that probably don't lose the game for them in any way. Like they, like, they don't show up on the box score. They're, they're, you know, ultimately they're plays that probably wouldn't have been made. I think neither of the things I'm going to bring up are things that decided the game, but they're things where you just watch a team operate and you go, this is a team that feels like the manager does not have the ear or the pulse of his team at all right now. Yeah, and it was in the 10th inning with the. With the. No, no. In the. Yeah, in the 10th inning with the. Let me back up. It was the 11th inning where the Orioles scored the go ahead run on the little squibber to second base to Altuve.

[Cole Thompson]

Right?

[Sean Pendergast]

And instead of covering home with the runner, Gunner Henderson was running on. Jump was running from second base. He didn't stop.

[Cole Thompson]

Right.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yiner Diaz starts strolling back to the dugout like it's the end of the inning and. And there's nobody covering home now. Gunner Henderson probably scores anyway on that play. But cover home.

[Seth Payne]

It's the. No, it's just a complete lackadaisical sense, like unawareness, lack of urgency. Just completely out to lunch on that cover home. Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

And then this. This decided nothing with the game. But it's one of those things where it's like this. This team just is not in sync with their manager or self. Awareness.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, I know where you're going.

[Sean Pendergast]

Zach Desenzo striking out to end the game. The ball bounces off the catcher and rolls 10ft to the side. I saying he would have beat it out to first base, but you're Zach decenzo.

[Seth Payne]

He didn't even look.

[Sean Pendergast]

No, he.

[Seth Payne]

Yelling at him.

[Sean Pendergast]

He walkered it.

[Seth Payne]

He just. Yes, he moped his way towards the dugout as the ball. As the catcher is scrambling to get the ball. It could have. He would have made it difficult.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

The catcher would have had to make a decision on where to throw it. Like, whether to hit him. Throw the ball, whatever. Like, it just.

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He.

[Seth Payne]

But it was nowhere in his brain.

[Sean Pendergast]

You're Zach disenzo, man.

[Seth Payne]

You're right. Like, this is. And that's. That's a sequence. Those two plays right there are the ones where he felt like, who the hell are these guys? Who's this team?

[Sean Pendergast]

Like, who's running this thing?

[Cole Thompson]

Think about this, though, for a second. Zach decenzo could actually have playing time now because Christian Walker left in the fourth inning with an oblique injury. So he has first base reps. Who wants to see you go out there and just pull a Christian Walker when you're Zach freaking Desenzo?

[Sean Pendergast]

He is. Well, if he's gonna be. If you're gonna be playing first base. And you're replacing Christian Walker. You may go full Walker. I say yeah as well.

[Seth Payne]

It's. Honestly, it's like all the. I was thinking about this last night. All of these, like all the old school complaints and the grudge that you start to feel against a team, just. I will give, I'll throw out all the cliches about this baseball team. Yes. They don't want it enough. These guys don't care.

[Cole Thompson]

I don't know.

[Seth Payne]

It's like, who the hell are these guys? When you compare these guys to some of the golden era Astros, you do you realize that it's over time, year after year? All right? We bring in these guys who are not only disappointments on the baseball field, but. But also just flat out, they're not cut from the same cloth. Like, and this is, which is odd because I thought we were getting away from analytics and back to the old blood and guts and everything. These guys, I don't need analytics to tell you that these guys don't have the same sense of urgency. I just play hard, know what the hell you're doing. It's ridiculous.

[Sean Pendergast]

Well, this is, this is how, you know, couple of things here. One, after, after that debacle on Saturday, I tweeted after the debacle, I'm like, we're one more bad loss away from the lead. Topic being is, should Joe Espada be the manager of this team? Not at the end of the year, like now. Like, should he be the manager of this baseball team? You're running out of ways. If you're Jim Crane who's going to try to hold on to the window for as long as he can, you're running out of ways to light a spark under this.

[Seth Payne]

Hey, great, they got a bunch of high draft picks for the first time in forever. Please don't, please don't trade them.

[Sean Pendergast]

No, yeah, exactly, exactly.

[Seth Payne]

Like, please, please. Let's just, let's let's recognize for what it is that you're running on fumes here. And there's nothing about this baseball team right now that makes you feel like they've actually got the ability to do anything impressive.

[Sean Pendergast]

No, no. And that's, and real quick, the, the, the part two, they've gotten off to bad starts in all three of Joe spotted seasons here. The difference here is that by the time they're 101 games in. By the time 101 games had rolled around the previous two Joe Espada seasons, they had, they had flipped the script on the season, you know, his first season, they got off to a horrible start. They were 12 and 24 by the time they were 101 games in right after the All Star break. They're 52 and 49. They're above.500. Sure, they're playing good baseball. Last season they started off 17 and 18. They were 59 and 42. By this time last year they were. I went and did the numbers yesterday. That sweep of the Dodgers last year over 4th of July weekend. They were 20 games above.500 after that sweep. They were 55 and 35 after that sweep of the Dodgers. They are 79 and 94 since then. Since that sweep of the Dodgers. So my point with all this is the previous two seasons, yeah, they've gotten off to bad starts, but they've turned it around by the time they get to that hundred game mark. They're, they're going the wrong way this time.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Like there's nothing, there's no, there's. And they finish. It's not like they finish with 95 wins and either they, they, they, they had to do that to finish with 88 and 87 wins in those season.

[Seth Payne]

And the, I mean everything about the way they've handled it despite all of the injuries, if you just look at the pitching alone, I mean, what do you do if you're Dana Brown and you're talking to Jim Crane about these six guys plus Peter Lambert that you, that you, that you added to the roster this year?

[Cole Thompson]

Well, thank God he added Peter Lambert

[Seth Payne]

at this point, which is his least heralded one.

[Cole Thompson]

Right.

[Seth Payne]

Remember, Spencer Araghetti wasn't good enough to make the opening day roster for this baseball team because you had, you had the Mike Burroughs of this world and the Ryan Weiss that you couldn't doubt. How. Well, there's no place for Spencer Ericetti on this baseball team.

[Cole Thompson]

Well, you DFA'd Peter Lambert and thankfully he took the assignment or else he could be pitching elsewhere, right?

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, that was the one. Exactly. 100%. The guys. He brought in six. Dan Brown brings in six major league pitchers and they DFA, Peter Lambert, Spencer Araghetti not good enough to be a part of this rotation at the beginning of the season. What the hell are you guys doing? What are you even doing? You can't even evaluate your own guys. Yeah, no, you, they're going to, they're going to. At the trade deadline, I swear he's going to trade away 10 prospects for three mediocre pitchers and they're going to come in and suck.

[Cole Thompson]

And you already have the 30th ranked bunch farm system in baseball.

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[Cole Thompson]

Or at best on most, I think baseball America has the highest. They're 27.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Cole Thompson]

So you're still a bottom three farm system and you're trading away assets when, let's be real, the window of being the legit contender in the American League is closed.

[Seth Payne]

It also, it feels so much. You know what it feels like this baseball team is right now? It feels like a bunch of little spoiled brat, like prep school kids who's. Because, because they're okay.

[Sean Pendergast]

You got me intrigued.

[Seth Payne]

Because they' daddy. Well, because their daddies are rich and they wear this blazer that has an Astros logo on it and they feel like I'm a Houston Astro. We always win baseball.

[Cole Thompson]

So they're walking around and letters.

[Seth Payne]

They're imposters. Yeah, they're like. Yeah, they all, they're all wearing the logo of a bunch of like, that represents a bunch of guys who did things completely differently from the front office down to the actual players on the field. And like, look, Altuve is not the guy who's going to kind of demand that the young guys play up to a certain level. He leads by example and all of that. But the guys who are just gritty, grimy, nasty ballplayers like George Springer or Alex Bregman, they're. They're gone. They're not nowhere to be seen. And when I say they're gone, I don't just mean that in body. The spirit of those guys and the way they play baseball out there is just not nearly the same.

[Sean Pendergast]

It's a great, It's a great observation. Sorry, Seth. When you. I had PTSD when you were. When you were talking about. What does Dana Brown say when he goes into Sit down with Jim Crane and talk about the six pictures that he picked up.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Because I just got. I got back to thinking. I'm like, I remember that feeling when I was running sales for an entire company and my forecast sucked for the month.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

And you go into your staff meeting with the CEO like, so, Sean, how the numbers looking for this month? And you know, the numbers are bad and you're just trying to come up with something that makes them feel good.

[Seth Payne]

A bunch of great leads.

[Sean Pendergast]

I don't know.

[Commercial Announcer]

Yeah, yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

No, the pipeline.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

There's always a pipeline. Now, not as much coming in as we were hoping this month, but the pipeline.

[Cole Thompson]

We checked in on these groups.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We've been in touch. We've got a lot of meetings.

[Seth Payne]

Let me show you all the people I've called.

[Cole Thompson]

There was mutual interest on both sides.

[Sean Pendergast]

We got. We got a lot of meetings set up. Yeah. Because Rodri Munoz, Ryan Weiss, Nate Pearson, in my mind, these all guy. These guys all represent deals that I lost back in the day. They're not with the team anymore.

[Cole Thompson]

They.

[Sean Pendergast]

These are the six. The six major league pickups that Dana Brown made. And let me. Let me caveat with Dana. I don't think Dana Brown's going to make it out of this. I don't think Dana Brown was playing with the. I think the deck was stacked against him a little bit in taking this job. Like he inherited some, you know, Jose Abreu and the Javier contract and some other things. Still, that's no excuse for your six pickups, three of them being DFA by the All Star break or shortly after in the case of Nate Pearson. And then the other three, Tatsuya Imai has been, I'll be kind up and down this year. He's got a six era. Mike Burroughs has been a disaster. And then Kai Way Tang was fine as a reliever but stunk as a starter.

[Cole Thompson]

Right.

[Sean Pendergast]

Those are your six.

[Seth Payne]

Oh, the other one about Yiner yesterday, since we were on Yiner a little bit, was just throwing when Alonzo. Hunter Brown doesn't hold. Alonzo on. Alonzo steals second. There's no chance of making the play. Yiner throws, the second run, scores.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Cole Thompson]

Double steal.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. The double steal. Yeah. Like. And just the brain dead. Brain dead stuff.

[Cole Thompson]

Yes.

[Seth Payne]

And that's where you wonder, okay, exactly what some of that stuff that happens. I like Espada. I don't. You know me, Sean, I don't need managers or coaches to be guys who are big yellers and screamers, because that's not what. That's. There are plenty of guys who hold people to a really high standard without having to do it that way. But I don't sense that anywhere on the team from anybody. It just. It's ridiculous.

[Sean Pendergast]

Would this be happening onto Dusty Baker's watch?

[Seth Payne]

Right, Right.

[Sean Pendergast]

And I know the Dusty supporters, and I like Dusty.

[Cole Thompson]

He was good manager.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Cole Thompson]

He won the World Series title. You gotta take that.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. No. Yeah. I'm not here to adjudicate Dusty's tenure. Dusty's a good manager. There's no doubt there. There's. I'm sure there's people hearing us say that going, told you. Told you. Dusty wasn't as bad as we thought.

[Seth Payne]

This is the difference, though, too. Is that Dusty look, yeah, obviously, Dusty came into a much better situation than Espada and Dana Brown have come into. But I think that the difference was, though, too, that there were a lot of. Just. There was a lot of player leadership. And by leadership, I mean just a certain standard. Remember when AJ Hinch had to talk to a Kyle Tucker about having to have more. Having more of a sense of urgency because he wasn't the same as those other guys? And that's what we get. You could feel that the entire time Kyle Tucker was here. That's why I wasn't as emotionally upset over him as other guys, because he just wasn't cut from the same cloth. And these guys, it feels like they're trying to get as many guys who are more like, in the mold of Kyle Tucker's lackadaisical attitude out there than there are. Than there are the George Springers of the world.

[Cole Thompson]

Would you guys be mad at this comp on the text line we have Spotter reminds me of. David Cully only wants to talk about the positives.

[Sean Pendergast]

I think there are elements to that comparison, but not entirely middle. Yeah. I don't think David Cully was completely.

[Seth Payne]

David Cully just didn't know. I mean, that was. There were certain basic things about even being a coordinator that he didn't understand. Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. And I think Espada. Like Espada. I think. I think there. There are definite strategic things I disagree with with him. I think he's way too old school in some of the things that he does.

[Seth Payne]

He's in love with the small ball.

[Sean Pendergast]

Small ball and bunting. And got a pinch run for good hitters because this guy's one mile an hour, you know, like 2% faster than this Guy at the end of game.

[Seth Payne]

Really the move that ended up probably helping getting him the job was in the playoffs when he pinch hit John Singleton. Honestly wasn't. It's not like we were all sitting there like, oh, thank God, Singleton's in now.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, Singleton.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. Yeah. And it was. But it was. He's in love with that type of stuff.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

The small ball maneuvering at the end of games now it's. I always remind. I try to give him a little bit of a break because it's not like he's dealing. There aren't just power hitters who abound on this lineup that are. That you should be banking on. But even when Christian Walker was hitting really well, he was pinch running Christian Walker. Now it makes more sense. Christian Walker can't do anything.

[Sean Pendergast]

He pinch. He pinch runs for Jordan Alvarez in close games. Yeah, he did that. He was one hitter away from your. A pinch hitter for Jordan or a pinch runner for Jordan a couple innings prior? In a game earlier this year, One batter away from that spot in the lineup. Coming up, the Astros lost the game. One hitter before that. But I. Yeah, that's.

[Cole Thompson]

I.

[Sean Pendergast]

So there's a.

[Seth Payne]

There.

[Sean Pendergast]

There are a lot of philosophical things with Joe Espada that I disagree with. I don't think he's unfit to be a manager, though. Like, David Cully was unfit to be a head coach in the NFL. Like, he just didn't understand the nuances of decision making in games.

[Seth Payne]

My favorite David Colley moment.

[Sean Pendergast]

He was way more hilarious in press conferences.

[Seth Payne]

Well, at the very end of the season when he was on Texans All Access, I remember. Remember him? You know, John or Mark had asked a question about, like, hey, what's something you learned this year? And he said it like it was the most novel concept in the world. This is a guy who's been in the NFL for decades. You know, sometimes. You know, what I realized is sometimes if you just go up tempo a little bit, it can kind of get the offense going, really. But the way he said it, too, it was like he'd never even heard of the concept before. It wasn't because that's. People always have that complaint, like, why don't you guys go up tempo more? And usually there's reasons why you don't. The reason usually isn't that, like, the coordinator just. The coach didn't even think of it.

[Cole Thompson]

Right.

[Seth Payne]

Like, oh, I didn't even know that was an idea.

[Sean Pendergast]

I didn't know it was available to me.

[Cole Thompson]

Did you hear this new concept? It's called Two minute drill.

[Seth Payne]

Maybe we should try this.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, try it. Okay. Text message. I knew you guys were going to crash out this morning, and y' all are not disappointing. Christian Walker has totally checked out at the end.

[Seth Payne]

I'm disgusted with myself. I might as well be Einer Diaz in knowing what the hell's going on with his baseball team. Because on Friday, I'm like, well, I can't remember what I said on Friday. I think you were happy. You were happy. That's right. I know. I'm so stupid because I had a few days off. I was well rested, and I was

[Sean Pendergast]

like, that's what I thought they would be. They've had a few days off. They're well rested.

[Seth Payne]

The only thing productive that came out of the weekend was Hunter Brown almost murdering Alonzo. Yeah, internal bleeding right now.

[Sean Pendergast]

He did not like that.

[Seth Payne]

He seems like a nice enough guy, but it was fun to watch a little bit of internal bleeding.

[Sean Pendergast]

All right, Baseball talk On Sports Radio 610 is presented by Xfinity. Score. The most reliable Wi Fi. One price, five years guaranteed. Xfinity. Imagine that. All right, we've got a countdown going on to training camp, which starts a week from Wednesday. So we started counting down last Thursday, 10 radio days until Texans training camp. We're on day number eight right now. We counted down last week. If you want to go back and listen to the questions. We're doing a question of the day for the Texans leading up to training camp. We've been doing it in this segment. Cole, what is our question for today?

[Cole Thompson]

Will the new Derek Barnett please stand up?

[Sean Pendergast]

Oh, good. I know this will be one Seth likes. This has to do with depth at the defensive end position. All right, good. All right, so we'll do that.

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Paragould has luxury home's largest selection of outdoor furniture, lighting, decor and more. Access more than 2,000 of design's best brands with beautiful all weather pieces in every style from traditional to modern. Plus enjoy free design services and full service delivery on most items. Shop in store and online at paragould. Com. Paragould Luxury lives here. I'm Jenna Fisher. And I'm Angela Kinsey and we have the podcast Office Ladies. Every Wednesday we'll be sharing even more exclusive stories and lots of laughs. Follow and listen to Office Ladies on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts.