FULL SHOW - Friday, July 17th

Summary

Payne & Pendergast – Full Show – Friday, July 17th, 2026

Episode Overview

On this episode, Seth Payne and Sean Pendergast, with guest Cole Thompson, deliver their signature Houston sports talk, sharp Texans and Astros analysis, and spirited banter. The show covers Astros’ post-All-Star break state, Houston’s trade deadline needs, Jose Altuve’s aging curve and value, big Texans roster questions, and some lighter fare, including viral sports moments and a heartfelt Farewell to producer Ben. Regular banter and inside jokes keep the tone candid and fun, making for an engaging episode packed with local sports insights.

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Main Themes

• Astros’ post-All-Star break outlook and trade deadline needs
• Jose Altuve’s aging, contract, and legacy
• Texans’ wide receiver depth and looming cap challenges
• Trade value of Houston sports stars (Texans-specific)
• Sports media takes and the “Take-a-Mania” segment
• Farewell segment for producer Ben
• News and lighter moments from the sports world

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Astros: Post-Break Outlook and Trade Deadline (02:42, 32:59, 120:01)

• Returning from All-Star Break: Hosts discuss how short the break feels and the psychological need for fans to have nightly games. (02:48–03:44)
• Starting Rotation State: Peter Lambert opens Astros’ 2nd half—ironic, given his near-DFA prior—reflecting Astros’ ongoing rotation upheaval. (04:07–04:29)
• Trade Deadline Debate: Bat or Arm? Payne and Pendergast both prefer a starting pitcher over another bat, citing rotation fatigue and the “car wash” effect being gone.
  • Seth Payne (05:28): "An arm. And specifically a starting pitcher...there’s just going to be a lot of wasted effort if you don’t have good starting pitching."
  • Cole Thompson counters (06:14): Astros outfield still underwhelming—might be room for a bat if they're not getting rotation aces.
• The Lost Astros Edge: The hosts note the analytics/driveline “edge” that made the Astros famous seems missing. (08:39–10:45)
  • “The car wash seems closed now.” – Sean, 07:53
• AI in MLB Dugouts: They riff on the league’s new crackdown and reflect on how Astros, once data innovators/borderline rule-benders, now feel behind.
  • “Five years ago, if I saw this report...People are mad that the Astros are using that effectively. I don’t know if the Astros even have their iPads plugged into the WiFi.” — Seth (09:14–09:33)

Astros—Deadline Needs Blind Ranking (120:01)

1. Starting pitcher
2. Left-handed, power-hitting outfielder
3. Second baseman
4. Middle reliever
5. Utility infielder

On Christian Walker (179:04)

• He’s “played awful” and is sliding. They admit he needs to get right for Houston to make a run.
• Seth: “If it wasn’t for the start of the season, it would be...an airport escalator.”

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Jose Altuve: Aging, Value & Legacy (11:25, 13:03, 17:35)

• Aging Curve: Altuve’s steady (not sudden) decline traced through OPS+, showing the normal, almost “freakish,” stepwise regression expected from a star at his age. (13:03)
  • “He’s just, he’s not the peak version of himself.” – Seth
• Contract & Sentimentality: The contract extension was always about him retiring as an Astro (“Astro for life”), with acknowledgment he'd eventually be overpaid.
• Leadership & Role: Both hosts expect Altuve to move in the order himself out of self-awareness if the time comes, contrasting him with the Abreu saga.
• Milestones: Debates over chasing 3,000 hits, and hypothetical “artificial” extensions to get him there. (20:23–21:44)
  • “That would feel like you’re manipulating the record...you gotta get ‘em through the normal course of playing the sport.” – Sean
• Trade Value: Little to none; his value is as a “sentimental guy here.” (17:35)
• Take-a-Mania Callback: One viral media take accused Altuve of steroid use if he continued playing at an All-Star level, which the hosts skewered as both illiterate and comically off-base. (144:08)
  • Seth: “If Altuve were taking steroids right now, I’d be most upset with his steroid dealer.”

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Texans: Wide Receiver Room, Secondary & Cap Juggling (22:27, 44:37)

Receiver Depth Confidence (22:27–29:32)

• Question of the Day: “What’s the internal confidence in Texans wide receivers not named Nico Collins?”
  • Optimism in Jaden Higgins' development; Jalen Noel has flash (esp. special teams), but is more of a wildcard. (23:47)
  • Team’s lack of offseason moves signals real confidence in WR depth, especially “forwards and up.” (24:00–25:21)
  • Seth: “They did much more substantial things than maybe it sometimes feels like when you’re discussing the wide receiver room.”

Trade Value, Cap, and the Looming Squeeze (44:37–58:31)

• Bill Barnwell’s Trade Value Ranking, and implications:
  • Will Anderson Jr. & C.J. Stroud—“two 1st round picks and more” category
  • Derek Stingley Jr.—“worth a first + more”—but injury history matters
  • Kamari Lassiter & Kalen Bullock—worthy assets for big trade value soon; a day of reckoning is coming for the secondary given cap realities
• Which to Trade: If forced, Cole & Seth would trade Stingley for a bigger haul, citing fit, value, and cap room.
  • Cole (55:12): “Two for the price of one...If I can afford Kamari Lassiter and Kalen Bullock on a long-term deal, it’s worthy of moving off of a guy like Derek Stingley.”
  • Sean (58:17): “Kamari Lassiter fits [Texans’ ethos] at 115%—would be Stingley [to trade] for me.”
• Nico Collins, Daniel Hunter: Both are “first round pick” level trade chips; team may have decisions as young talent emerges and cap crunch looms.

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Take-a-Mania! Bad Sports Media Takes Contest (131:20–147:18)

• Defending champ: Adam Schefter’s contradiction: “despite any gambling partnerships, the league really does not want any part of gambling…” (131:54)
• Winner: Vince Goodwill (espn)—Railed against Wembanyama for “hurting” players by taking less money for the team, over-prioritizing player vs. team/owner self-sacrifice.
  • Seth: “Listen, bro, you don’t have to be my nanny. I’m Victor Wembin-freaking-Yama.” (136:23)
• Other challengers: Perkins (espn)—Jalen Brunson is “cemented” as a first-ballot Hall of Famer for his ESPYs; Ryan Clark—angry at Lamar Jackson’s Top 100 ranking; streamer Tanner Anderson accuses Altuve of PEDs.

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Lighter Segments & Memorable Audio

Ben’s Farewell & Hotkey Segment (148:19–159:41)

• Warm/funny goodbye to longtime producer Ben, playing a montage of favorite show “hot keys”—mostly out-of-context Seth moments (“Oi!”, “What the hell’s this? Quesadilla?” “You go full Ted Bundy”; Brandy’s roast: “I like to ramble and tell dumb jokes; this interview is over!”).
  • Seth (149:40): “I will miss you, Ben. Don’t make eye contact with me.”

Notable Quotes & Comedy

• Mike Tyson at ESPYs misgendering Shohei Ohtani (106:21): “She could not be here tonight...”
• Jameis Winston’s first NFL splurge? A $4,600 vibrating recliner for grandma (82:51)
  • Jameis: “...you only see a vibrating chair in the mall for like 50 cents, you know, and I got my grandma that beside chair.”
• Musings: Sports’ most and least attractive hobbies (110:25), including Sean’s tally (“Gambling? Yes. Porn? Not a hobby. Arguing online? Job requirement...”).

Speed Round: News You May Have Missed (65:18–77:27)

• Two large Carolina lottery wins (“I had a vision to buy a scratch-off...$500,000!”)
• Minor leaguer Jaden Fielder gets hit by same team 6 out of 9 times in a season
• Blue Angels flyover in Pensacola sends umbrellas and people flying (“seven feet above the crowd!”)
• Cody Rhodes' and CM Punk’s “athletic” mishaps: can't kick a field goal/shoot a basketball
• Longest hook shot world record—only 82 ft

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• [02:42] Astros' All-Star Break / Rotation / Trade Deadline
• [11:25] Altuve: Can he Heat Up?
• [22:27] Texans WRs not named Nico
• [32:59] Astros Headlines: Playoff Race, MLB AI Crackdown
• [44:37] Bill Barnwell’s Trade Value Ranks (Texans)
• [65:18] News You May Have Missed (lottery, oddities)
• [77:27] Jameis Winston: First Contract Splurge
• [104:30] Least Attractive Hobbies for Men (Sean skewered)
• [120:01] Astros Blind Need Rankings
• [131:20] Take-a-Mania
• [148:19] Ben’s Farewell Montage

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Tone & Takeaways

The show was a mix of strong analysis (especially on the Astros’ tenuous playoff hopes, and Texans’ looming cap management), hating on silly sports media takes, and everyday-guy humor. Sean’s and Seth’s ability to combine in-depth Houston sports talk with irreverent banter (and a celebration of the quirks of their show and city) makes for a highly entertaining episode.

Memorable Moments:

• “The car wash seems closed now” (Astros’ pitcher fix magic is gone!)
• “If Altuve were taking steroids right now, I’d be most upset with his steroid dealer.”
• Farewell to Ben, via hotkey medley—including Seth’s riotous mangled accents and rampant self-roasting

For Houston fans: Informed, unfiltered, and absolutely in on the joke. If you missed the show, this episode captured the pulse of Houston’s sports summer—worried about pitching, wistful about Altuve, and always ready to laugh through the stress.

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Useful Links

• [Full Astros 2027 schedule on social media] (35:38)
• [Show podcast and segment chapters via Odyssey app/website]

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End of Summary

Transcript

[Seth Payne]

Why does it feel like nobody really

[Cole Thompson]

gives us the inside scoop?

[Seth Payne]

Join us on the Powers that Be, the podcast where insiders from Puck break

[Sean Pendergast]

down who has influence, how they use

[Seth Payne]

it, and what it actually means for you.

[Cole Thompson]

New episodes every weekday.

[Seth Payne]

Listen to the Powers that Be wherever

[Cole Thompson]

you get your podcasts.

[Sean Pendergast]

Sports Radio 610 presents Seth Payne and Sean Pendergast.

[Seth Payne]

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

[Sean Pendergast]

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

[Seth Payne]

Let's do it.

[Sean Pendergast]

Hey, what's happening, everybody? Happy, happy Friday to all of you. We made it nice to be with you. Appreciate you getting up with us. We are with you until 10am this morning. I am Sean Pendergast. He is Pope Zaza. Seth C. Pain. He is Cole Thompson in with us again today. Good morning. Good morning, gentlemen.

[Seth Payne]

Cole's the only guy that's dressed for summer.

[Cole Thompson]

Hey.

[Seth Payne]

Looks like he's ready to go to a cookout.

[Cole Thompson]

To be fair, I have done Hawaiian Friday every day since my junior year. Oh, this is like a tradition.

[Sean Pendergast]

That's a theme.

[Cole Thompson]

Oh, yeah, it's every Friday.

[Sean Pendergast]

Oh, okay.

[Seth Payne]

Every Friday, year round.

[Cole Thompson]

Every Friday, year round. I have. I think I have have two dozen Hawaiian shirts that I go through.

[Sean Pendergast]

It's branding right there.

[Cole Thompson]

It's branding, literally. Someone sponsor me. Let's go.

[Sean Pendergast]

Nice, nice. Yeah, get cola Tommy Bahama sponsorship or something.

[Cole Thompson]

Just don't give me the pineapple that comes with it.

[Sean Pendergast]

No, no, no, no, no.

[Seth Payne]

So, yeah, try to get fatter. I say fatter. That sounds. You should try to get fat. You're not fat at all.

[Cole Thompson]

Is it weird that I'm like a skinny guy wearing a Hawaiian shirt?

[Seth Payne]

Guys probably get pissed at you, bro. Stay in your lane.

[Cole Thompson]

They give me scorn looks. I will say that when we were month to the Bahamas, I wore a Hawaiian shirt every single day. And there was at least two fat guys that would stare me down.

[Sean Pendergast]

Why do the fat guys have a. They. They kind of.

[Cole Thompson]

It's their shtick.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, there's something. It's. I don't know what it is. Weird. It's. That's kind of a common, like, cliche or whatever. It's like a fat guy wearing a Hawaiian shirt. And I don't know why. Like, I don't think. I don't think fat guys do it because they're like. Like they think it's slimming or anything. I don't know what. They do it because it's comfortable.

[Sean Pendergast]

I used to be a fat guy. Like, I Used to be much fatter. Yeah. When I was. I didn't wear Hawaiian shirts, but this is like back in the, like, mid, early mid 2000s, when the Sopranos were a big deal, I would wear a lot of those Tony Soprano style, like, kind of like bowling shirts, right? Yeah, well, yeah, yeah.

[Cole Thompson]

Not straight bowling, but like the way the fabrics made.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was like kind of a silky fabric untucked. And it was. They were super comfortable, man. They were just loose and they breathed and it hid the discomfort that was going on with the waist of whatever pants I was wearing at the time, you know? So it was. Yeah, yeah. So it's. I could see that. I could see where the fat guys have. The. Have kind of cornered the market on that.

[Cole Thompson]

Go ahead and fight me over at fat guys. Let's go.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. Bring it on. Bring it on. So we get actual baseball again tonight. That's good. Have you guys missed this over the last few days?

[Seth Payne]

You know what? This one, it actually, I get discussed it with myself that, honestly, we act like the All Star break is this huge deal in terms of, like, the time spent without baseball or whatever, and it's. It's a week or less. Plus, you have the All Star game added in, and at least. You know, at least one of your players, Jordan Alvarez, gets. You get to see him. So. No, if anything, I always feel a little disappointed that it wasn't longer than it was.

[Sean Pendergast]

Really.

[Seth Payne]

Not that I don't miss having baseball. I just. I feel like. I feel like a wimp for having complained about no baseball.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. Well, I think we did a good job of. Of not complaining. This. I just like having it back. You get. You get in this groove where you can count on it every night.

[Seth Payne]

It doesn't feel like it's actually been gone. Is the one thing.

[Cole Thompson]

I think it's the dead period of no sports is why you miss it's so much.

[Sean Pendergast]

Maybe. Maybe. Yeah. I'm forced to watch the ESPYs and whatnot. I'm going to the game tonight, so I'm going to be there to make sure that everything is in line for the second half of the season. Have my clipboard out, ready to go,

[Cole Thompson]

see if not ready.

[Sean Pendergast]

Checking all the boxes. Yeah. So, scouting report. Yeah.

[Cole Thompson]

What's your M.O. for tonight's game?

[Sean Pendergast]

Me?

[Cole Thompson]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Oh, I honestly. Well, I'm going. I'm going to be sitting in a suite, so it'll involve a lot of eating and drinking. If I'm being honest. There will be no clipboard. There will be semi Paying attention to the game, especially because tomorrow's Saturday, so I don't have to come in with hot takes. Hot takes on the game.

[Seth Payne]

Well, and you've got, you know, Lambert's pitching, so that's the.

[Sean Pendergast]

Is that who's pitching?

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, the one guy that you can really feel good about right this moment pitching.

[Sean Pendergast]

That. That's really interesting. I mean, that's. That says a lot about where the Astros are kind of trustwise right now with the starting rotation. Yeah. Is it Lambert's. The guy that. Lambert, the guy who in the first half of the season at this time was DFA'd, is the first guy out to shoot in the second half of the season.

[Seth Payne]

It's the whole. I mean, remember, Dana Brown brought in six pitchers. They've got a combined ERA of about six right now, which is some nice symmetry. And the guy, the one guy who's actually been performing well is the guy that they actually tried to get rid of first. So that's how bad the off season acquisitions were for starting for starting pitchers 8 and 5.

[Sean Pendergast]

And he's got an ERA of just barely over 3. He's been awesome. He deserves to be the guy starting the first game out of the chute in the. In the second half of the season.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

So Matt Kawahara had five big questions for the Astros heading into the second half here. So as we set the table for the second half of the season for the Astros, this is probably the biggest one here, is with the trade deadline coming up, what's the biggest deadline? Need bat or arm? Seth, what would excite you more right now if this were the day before the trade deadline or if this were the day of the trade deadline?

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

What would excite you more if Dana Brown went and got a bat or an arm?

[Seth Payne]

An arm. And specifically a starting pitcher. Yeah. Like, hey, right handed reliever. Great. I get tired of talking about platoon splits and everything these days when like. So there's so many guys, especially on the Astros, where it just doesn't matter whether they're facing righties or lefties.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

I look, look how many different. Like it's. It's not complicated math or anything. You look at the various games over the last, over this season, and even including since they've made their resurgence, that you're simply not going to win because your starting pitcher goes out and gets shelled. And then the trickle down effect of your release being worn out, it makes it really hard to. Where the Astros could add a bat who might be super productive, but there's Going to be a lot of wasted efforts if you don't have good starting pitching.

[Cole Thompson]

But let me counter argument this. It's a low tier starter versus a decent power bat. Because if you're just getting a low tier starter, a guy that's like a number four or number five because you can't afford like the. The San Diego Contras of the world

[Sean Pendergast]

or something, like, yeah, they're not getting one of those guys.

[Cole Thompson]

So. So it's like that's where I think that you go back and forth of. Can you win with Hunter Brown turning the corner with maybe Christian Javier giving you a little bit more. Spencer Ericetti finding himself again because of. I at least know you need to be able to get something in that outfield right now.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, you got to get. You've got to get something in the outfield, but you do have guys at the top of the order that it can at least do something. I'm still just. You know, we went through that period where Joe Espada was basically heaping praise on Mike Burroughs. If he just went five innings, even if he allowed seven runs, it was like, hey, look at that. I don't have to make hard decisions with my relievers today or tomorrow. That. I guess that's maybe it's a little bit of PTSD over just, you know, Imai going out there and lasting one in a third inning that I. I just feel like it's all for naught. No matter who you have in the lineup. If. If you just got all these guys that just flat out can't. They just. They can't give. Like, we need. We don't need the batters to support the pitchers. We need the pitchers to support the batters.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, I.

[Cole Thompson]

The.

[Sean Pendergast]

The thing that. The thing that is just. I don't know if this sways me one way or the other on what they should do, but just in general and looking at the team, the thing that's disappointing is that if this were. If this were two years ago, like when they traded for Kikuchi for. You say Kikuchi, and he was having a disappointing season. Where was he? Toronto. It was Toronto. That was a low profito trade. The first low profit.

[Cole Thompson]

I said the first one everyone hated.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, the. Right.

[Cole Thompson]

I remember the DMS for that one. People losing their mind. Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

So. So they get Kikuchi and Kikuchi comes here and he goes 9 and 1. The car wash was still open back then. The Astros pitching car wash. I. The car wash seems closed now. Like, if the car wash were still open Then Imai wouldn't have a six something era. You know, Spencer Arrogetti would, would be much more consistent than he is. You know, that there's that, that's the thing that's just overall disappointing. Like they like normally two years ago, bringing in an arm, I'm like, oh, cool, get the guy in the building. And whatever he was, he's not going to be anymore. Even good pitch. Like, even like Verlander when they traded for him, got better. Garrett Cole got better. Good pitchers, great pitchers. We're getting better coming here. That's the thing that's just disappointing to me right now is I feel like, yeah, they're going to make deals. I don't know what version of these guys you're going to get.

[Seth Payne]

Like, I feel like the Astros, in terms of all of those edges that they used to have in either the, the data side of things or in the development side of things, it feels like the brain drain over, you know, of guys just getting siphoned off from other organizations over time. And really obviously with Jeff Luno, but also with Brent Strom and just the guys who are the architects of all of that, the pitch and car wash. And then on the data side of things, on the analytics side of things, there's that story we're going to talk about later where they're cracking down on AI and the dugouts.

[Sean Pendergast]

I know.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. They said a third of the teams are doing it. And I'm sitting there and I'm thinking, you know what? Five years ago, if I saw this report, oh, I'm like, oh, people are. They're mad that the Astros are using that effectively. I don't know if the. I don't know if the Astros even have their iPads plugged into the WI fi.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yes.

[Seth Payne]

I don't know if they know how to operate it or not.

[Sean Pendergast]

You and I read that article with the exact same. With the exact same point of view on that.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, I control. I command F looking for Astros. No mention of the Astros.

[Sean Pendergast]

Nothing. No, that. I thought the same thing. Reading that. Seth, I'm like, man, like during the. Just certainly during the Jeff Luno era, like, you know, that would be 2019 was last season. Jeff Luna was here. Like, if this story were 2019, the whole thing would have been. There would have been a book about it already about the Astros using AI in the dugout.

[Seth Payne]

I think they now that, you know, because one of the things they always used to do with pitchers so effectively was they would change up their pitch selection when they came In. And now I feel like you still get that bump a little bit from your younger guys and from veterans that come in. But then I think I feel like they haven't. They forgot to write something into the program about, like, hey, let's also be sure that these pitches aren't going to tear their ucl. So they're like, they're like, oh, these guys are going to be magnificent for three. For three weeks, then they're going to tear their ucl and that's the last we'll ever hear.

[Sean Pendergast]

I thought the same thing. I'm like, like, not like, like your comment about the iPads even being, like, connected to the Y. I'm like, they're playing Angry Birds on the iPads of Friends. Candy Crush. Words with Fret. Yeah, wordle.

[Seth Payne]

They're over there. A spot is looking at the iPad and it makes it look like he's got sunglasses on, you know, playing jokes on. Playing jokes on the. On the other managers. Like, it makes it look like he's got a mole. Yeah, it's going to freak him out.

[Sean Pendergast]

Oh, my God, I miss the good old days. So, okay, here, come here.

[Seth Payne]

You look at the Mastro's iPad and it's. And it's Jordan and Altuve making themselves look like bodybuilders. Like, make it look like I've got 2%. While those guys shouldn't use those.

[Cole Thompson]

Taking silly photos of themselves while playing Angry Birds.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. Doing all the, all the superfluous iPad stuff. Second question from Matt Kawahara. Speaking of Altuve, can Jose Altuve heat up after the All Star break at age 30? What is he now 35, 36? Can he. Can he heat up after the All Star break?

[Seth Payne]

There's one thing I know about aging, it's that you get stronger and better as you get more and more tired.

[Sean Pendergast]

Definitely. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Seth Payne]

I almost booked a red eye the other night. What. What am I doing that's gonna ruin my next two months if I take a red eye?

[Cole Thompson]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

I beg you, as your co host, do not take a red eye. I don't need sleep deprived. Seth, what's the confidence level that Jose Altuve can catch fire after the All Star break for you?

[Seth Payne]

It's not all that high.

[Sean Pendergast]

I know, and that's depressing.

[Seth Payne]

I mean, the thing Altuve, to his credit, I suppose, is that he's not pulling a Jose Abreu. You know, he's aging. Like he's had a steady decline over the last three seasons.

[Sean Pendergast]

He's not unplayable.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. I mean, it's just, he's just, he's not the peak version of himself. But unfortunately, if you just look at his stats over the last three years, it's just a steady and gradual decline, the way you might expect that somebody's getting a year older every single year. So it's, it's certainly very possible, but it's not, it's not one of the things that I'm banking on.

[Sean Pendergast]

He'll have big hits here and there as he's done recently. Like, you know, he's just. Seth, I did not put a circle of trust in for today because I didn't want you on a Friday to have to deal with the internal debate over whether Jose Altuve should or shouldn't be in the circle in a bad mood or something. I don't want to send you into the weekend in a bad mood. Seth, having.

[Seth Payne]

Thanks. Appreciate that.

[Sean Pendergast]

Altuve outside the circle.

[Seth Payne]

I mean, just by, I mean it's, it's, it's kind of freakish how consistent he's been in declining like he was 2022. I'll just, I'll read off his ops for me. I'll do ops plus because that's easier to grasp. Yeah. So for those who don't know OPS plus is the average major league hitter is a 100. Yeah, they standardize it. So 2022, Jose had a 161.

[Sean Pendergast]

That's really, that's really, really, really good.

[Seth Payne]

Next year. 151. Still very good.

[Sean Pendergast]

Very good.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. 2024, it was a 124.

[Sean Pendergast]

Still not bad.

[Seth Payne]

Not bad. No. Still above average. Last year, 113.

[Sean Pendergast]

Okay.

[Seth Payne]

Slightly above average. And this year so far, 98. I mean, it's just, it's been very steady and gradual and his salary has

[Sean Pendergast]

steadily stayed at $30 million a year and will continue to stay at. Yeah, yeah.

[Seth Payne]

The ones that start dropping off next

[Sean Pendergast]

year or the year, two years. I think it's the last two years of the deal. I know that he goes down to like 10 or 13 million or something like that.

[Seth Payne]

Which again, thank you for that. Thank you for aging and planning for aging. He's like, when you build a house and plan for when you're old, you have like wider doorways to people, chair and everything. You would probably did that in the clubhouse. We're like, yeah, we got to widen some of these door frames because Crane's probably going to give Altuve a 10 year extension all of a sudden. Yeah. So 2000. His salary starts to go down in 2028. That's two years, $13 million.

[Sean Pendergast]

That feels like it's 10 years away.

[Cole Thompson]

He'd think it was.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Cole Thompson]

Is it wrong for me to say that I put a four on the confidence level because of. I think that knowing who he is at this point, you're more so worried about everybody else stepping on up around.

[Sean Pendergast]

So when you say that, do you, do you feel like four is being generous for him?

[Cole Thompson]

I think it's fair because there, because you already said it. There are some moments where he is going to have a clutch head, he is going to have that big play, he's going to be able to drive in the run that everybody remind yourself of when he was the mvp. But he's not a guy who I'm looking at at 36 years old as the future of this franchise that I want to see a foundation rod. I, I care more about seeing. Hey, Cam Smith, can you wake up and have a whole week of hitting?

[Sean Pendergast]

Great.

[Cole Thompson]

Yeah. Hey, Jeremy Pena, can you not find your way onto the IL for the rest of the season? Hey, Christian Walker, you were at one point viewed as an all star first baseman. Let's get back to that noggin. I care more about that at this point.

[Sean Pendergast]

The one thing about Altuve is I think he's, he's pretty self aware. There have been times where when he's been slumping before, he doesn't make any. He's gone to management before and said, hey, you should move me down. That kind of thing. Like when it was with Jose Abreu. I hate even having Altuve and Abreu in the same conversation. But it's, it's appropriate because while they're aging, Bray was an aging veteran whose stats were going down. You, you needed the jaws of life to get a brave out of the middle of the order. When Dusty and then Joe Espada were the manager, for whatever reason, they felt like he had to be batting 4 or 5. Just for psychological reasons. I don't think, I don't think you run in. I don't think you were. Hopefully we don't have to have this conversation about Altuve. Hopefully he does. And heat up. And by heat up I mean just, just get to get Back to your 113 OPS Plus.

[Seth Payne]

I just call, I'm going to read this one more stat. I try not, I try not to do too many stats during baseball because it's too easy to just all of a sudden just start reciting 29 million different stats.

[Cole Thompson]

Find yourself down the laundry list of just Stata. That does not matter.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, yeah, which. Which is what a lot of baseball writing has become, by the way. So we told you, average OPS plus is a 100 across baseball. It's standardized to be 100 average baseball player. Sean loves these ridiculously OPS pluses. Jose Abreu, in that final 35 games that he played in 2024. Those that he played 35 games, OPS plus three.

[Cole Thompson]

Okay, so he's nowhere near Jose Abreu level yet.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, not even three.

[Sean Pendergast]

Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

[Cole Thompson]

You haven't even broken into the ozone layer. You suck. Attuned yet.

[Sean Pendergast]

So that was. Was that the. Him going to Florida to bat by himself in the rookie league?

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, that was that year. Because 2020. Yeah, because 2023, he played 141 games

[Sean Pendergast]

and he was good at the end of the year in 2020. That's the problem.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, that's okay. You know what, though? Okay. Light at the end of the tunnel.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

El tube is way better than Jose Abreu was when Jose Abreu got old. Way, but about the same age. Bru was 36 years old in that 2023 season. But he did. If you're looking for some positives, like, hey, even Abreu wasn't nearly as good as Altuve is right now. Did end up having a really good September and October that year.

[Sean Pendergast]

He did. He did. Someone's asking on the text page, what do you think Altuve's trade value is right now? Two things on that. Number one, zero. And number two, they're not trading Jose.

[Cole Thompson]

Well, I mean, for multiple reasons.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, he would have a. He would have trade value as long as the Astros ate some of the salary. And just because those teams just like.

[Sean Pendergast]

Right.

[Seth Payne]

Just like the brewers probably want Lance McCullers in all of his playoff experience and everything. I think there'd be teams that. There'd be teams that'd be interested in Altuve for all of those reasons.

[Sean Pendergast]

There's. Altuve is just. He's too sentimental a guy here.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, no, they gave him that contract specific. I mean, the contract was engineered to acknowledge that he probably wasn't going to be that good in the last couple years.

[Sean Pendergast]

And. And that he would retire an Astro. I mean, that. That's. That was.

[Cole Thompson]

That was the thing.

[Sean Pendergast]

They were actually publicly saying that when he signed that extension, like, ah, now Jose Altuve gets to it. Which I thought was silly to say that at the time because you don't know what's going to happen.

[Cole Thompson]

Well, remember the graphics that came on out? Astro for life.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

[Cole Thompson]

Really? Really. Did anybody think that 27 was going anywhere else?

[Sean Pendergast]

Dude. Well, and. But you never know how sports work either. You know, like he. Who knows? Like, that's a five year deal. Like, he may want to go see. He may want to go. If the astros are winning 62 games a year by the third year of that deal, he might. He might have wanted to go play.

[Seth Payne]

Well, one of the. One of the just extremely unique twist of fate with Altuve was that ESPN and other outlets decided to make Altuve the face of the scandal. Yeah. You know, and like, so there's a part of it from Altuve, a standpoint that, you know, he. He very unjustly was basically made that this is the guy. This is the guy that's gonna get booed more lustily than anybody else coming out of the scandal and all of that. So, like, it makes it that you add that dynamic to. To it. And why the hell would he want to go anywhere else?

[Sean Pendergast]

Seth, there is a take a mania take today about Altuve that is gonna. It is going to. Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

It involves a scorcher.

[Sean Pendergast]

It involves everything. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Does it say anything about buzzers?

[Sean Pendergast]

I can't.

[Cole Thompson]

I don't think so.

[Sean Pendergast]

No. It accuses him of steroids, though.

[Seth Payne]

Oh, really?

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

There are. You got a bad bat.

[Cole Thompson]

I say, don't worry with the.250 batting average, this guy's got that ped going.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

He's not on. Yeah. The numbers would indicate he's not on steroids.

[Seth Payne]

They're. I. There'.

[Sean Pendergast]

People.

[Seth Payne]

Every now and then you see somebody that really, really, really should know better. Basically throw out the buzzer stuff.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

As if there's any validity to it whatsoever.

[Sean Pendergast]

There might have been.

[Seth Payne]

Take a walk.

[Sean Pendergast]

There might have been in that take. I don't remember because I was still trying to process the steroid accusations. Baseball Talk on 610 Sports Radio 610 is presented by Xfinity. Score, the most reliable Wi Fi One price, five years guaranteed Xfinity. Imagine that. All right, up next, question number nine. As we count down to the first day of training camp, Cole, what is the question for today for Texans training camp?

[Cole Thompson]

What is the internal confidence level of wide receivers not named?

[Sean Pendergast]

Nico, we talked about this a little bit yesterday. Oh, good. So we'll do a deeper dive on the wide receiver room. We'll do that when we come back. Next. Stay there. All right, texter, do not do this to us early in the. Don't make us math early in the morning. How close Does Altuve need to be to 3,000 hits to get an extension? He's got three years left on his deal. I'm not here to talk about a Jose Altuve extension, nor do the arithmetic to know this whole 3000 hit dynamic right now. Thankfully, Cole Thompson is here and he did it for me. What's he need? 185 hits a year.

[Cole Thompson]

If he finishes today with where he is in hits, he needs to average 185 hits over the next three years.

[Sean Pendergast]

Okay, well, that sounds kind of daunting, actually, right now. I don't know that he's going to get there, get to the 3,000.

[Cole Thompson]

Do you give him the extension on, like, the vet minimum? Just let's say he's like 20 hits away. Yeah, that last year. Here, go finish it out.

[Sean Pendergast]

He knows this about me. I'm not. I. That would. That would feel like you're manipulating the record just to bring him back on a minimum deal to get 22 hits to get. Not the record, but to get to the milestone.

[Cole Thompson]

So no Bernie MacKinnon. Right.

[Sean Pendergast]

I don't like artificial milestones or records. You got to get him through the normal course of playing the sport.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, I'm a little torn on that, I guess, because he would have value, though, also, as long as it was just some kind of deal where he's coming in as a pinch hitter late in games, maybe even a meaningless.

[Sean Pendergast]

And he's fun to have around, too.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. Yeah. And veteran leadership.

[Sean Pendergast]

Veteran leadership.

[Seth Payne]

Veteran leadership.

[Sean Pendergast]

You talked me into it. Yeah. Let's go. Don't make us math early in the morning.

[Seth Payne]

That's just got more experience at all ends of the spectrum than Jose.

[Sean Pendergast]

That's true.

[Seth Payne]

He's been on the worst teams in baseball. He's been on the best teams in baseball and everywhere in between.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yep. All right, so training camp is nine radio days away. So starting yesterday, we are counting down to training camp with a question of the day. Cole Thompson sitting in with Seth and I today and on Monday as well. If you want to go back and listen to question number 10 yesterday, it was about the offensive line and are they just more expensive? Are they actually improved? We're going to do it in this segment each day so you can make an appointment. What is today's question, Cole?

[Cole Thompson]

What's the internal confidence level of wide receivers not named Nico Collins?

[Sean Pendergast]

It's a great question.

[Cole Thompson]

Case in point. You strapped down Nick Caylee into a lie detector test. Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Cole Thompson]

He is forced to answer truthfully to save his job.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Cole Thompson]

What's the honest answer of the wide receiver room makeup. If you don't have Nico Collins.

[Sean Pendergast]

Okay.

[Seth Payne]

I think they're like, you just never know with younger players, but you can feel confident that they're doing things the right way and you can take what the good things they've done and know that you can build on them. I think he's very confident in Jaden Higgins. I think Jalen Noel is a little bit more of a wild card still. And, but the, the upside of Jalen Noel, gigantic. So I think the. Okay, there's confidence and there's excitement. So, you know, with excitement, hopefully usually being a little bit higher. But I think the, the possibilities of those two, I think he might be at a 7, 8 or 9. I think that actual confidence level, like a, like a six, they still have to, they still have to make a lot of strides, but they, they did much. They did some much more substantial things than maybe sometimes it feels like when you're discussing the wide receiver room.

[Sean Pendergast]

So the question is about the internal confidence level. We can talk about our confidence level.

[Seth Payne]

I'm talking about Nick Kaley.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, no. I'm not correcting you.

[Seth Payne]

I got you.

[Sean Pendergast]

I'm repeating. So the question is about the internal confidence level.

[Cole Thompson]

Yes.

[Sean Pendergast]

So the, the. I, I would. I always judge it by. We don't. Honest. Obviously we can't climb into their brains. We don't know.

[Cole Thompson]

We're not a fly on the water.

[Sean Pendergast]

I'm just judging by the behavior of the team and I'll expand it from Kaylee to Demico Ryan's and Nick Casario as well. It would seem to me their confidence level is incredibly high right now. Not only in Jaden Higgins and Jalen Noel, but maybe even in Tank Dell coming back from an injury because they haven't done anything with that room in the off season. They've done zero with that room. They're rolling with the same five guys they had.

[Seth Payne]

Well, they're rolling with Lewis Bond, but I mean, that's a six round pick.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. Anything of substance, right? Yeah. Any Bill o' Brien special Last year they got Christian Kirk and I, I would say I would. Other than the Pittsburgh playoff game, I would say that didn't work out, especially for the price they paid for him. They paid him $16 million. But they, they haven't done anything that says. They haven't done anything that shifts who the top four or five guys are. Louis drafting Lewis Bond doesn't change the dynamic of the first four or five guys. I would say their Confidence level. And Higgins and Noel are the two big wildcards in all this because I think Nico is what he is, which is great. I think Xavier Hutchinson is what he is, which is a back of the rotation wide receiver. The huge floor and ceiling guys are Noel and Higgins. And it would seem to me, based on what they've done or not done this off season, their confidence level from coordinator all the way up to GM is pretty high in these guys.

[Seth Payne]

And I think that the whole thing with. The whole thing with Jalen Noel especially, but both Jaden Higgins and Jalen Noel is. You could see the progression last year where early in the season there were times where Higgins and Noel just simply weren't in the right spot at the right time within the offense. Which is something that happens when you've got young guys in a brand new system with a brand new coordinator and the receivers are running option routes and they have to make adjustments based on coverage and all that. That's going to happen. And it's frustrating just looking at it in hindsight, like, okay, yeah, like all the, all the obstacles that you could have predicted. Yep, those ended up being obstacles. The, the feeling would be that, man, now that they're integrated into the offense, now that CJ's got better command of it and all that, those things aren't as much of an issue. On the physical side of things like the measurables and the reasons that those guys got drafted, I thought we saw boatloads of evidence of those guys being worth the draft picks. That Chargers game alone.

[Cole Thompson]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

And Jalen Noel being shot out of a rocket on that one touchdown play. But you could see the potential there. It's just that, yeah, it's. It's hard to utilize all of that even by that point in the season when the O line really still isn't. You go back and watch that game, I get so disgusted with people saying, like, hey, Blake Fisher didn't let up a sack. Like, yeah, but he got beat a lot. Yeah, he didn't let up a sack. He got his butt whipped.

[Sean Pendergast]

What's the pressure rate?

[Cole Thompson]

Let's talk about that.

[Sean Pendergast]

The pressure rate. Yeah.

[Cole Thompson]

What I thought is so interesting is that like Jaden Higgins quietly last year put up six touchdowns.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Cole Thompson]

And like when you compare him to some of the other rookie wide receivers because of he only had four games where he finished with over 55 receiving yards, it's like, okay, most of his production came in these certain gains, but he still was a factor inside the red zone and he actually tied Nico Collins for The team lead in receiving touchdowns. Yeah. You got to throw in that one rushing touchdown for Nico against the Indianapolis. Which is why he led the team.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yep. Are you surprised that three and a half is Jaden Higgins touchdown number upcoming season? I think there's some money to be.

[Seth Payne]

I was really sorry. I thought that was a misprint. I thought that. I thought the. Cole wrote that wrong when he wrote that down.

[Sean Pendergast]

That was. I put that.

[Cole Thompson]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Oh, you did.

[Cole Thompson]

Okay.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, that makes more sense.

[Sean Pendergast]

Degenerate.

[Seth Payne]

No, no. Yeah. 100%. You know that. You know, Steve Smith Sr. Loves Jaden Higgins. And it's funny, because when you hear him talk about Jaden Higgins, it sounds a lot like the same reasons you would get excited about a young Nico Collins. There's a. He's got an ability to really just like, get in, out. Get in and out of his brakes and lower his pads that. That not a lot of really tall guys do. And I mean, the measurables and everything with those two, there's so many of those things that just look similar. And I think in just. It's. It's a little. It's too easy to say, oh, all he's got to do is what Nico Collins did. But there is a little bit of truth to that.

[Sean Pendergast]

Become the seventh best wide receiver.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, no problem.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. Simple as that.

[Seth Payne]

Well, you know, I call. This is one thing. I've talked to Sean about this a bunch, but when. When Jaden Higgins was in the draft process last year, they had asked him who he likes, which receivers he likes to watch, and he said, Keenan Allen was one of those guys, and which I liked, and it was interesting. But the dangerous thing with that, with young receivers is sometime that, okay, Keenan Allen's got. He's a little bit of an unorthodox route runner. And sometimes, like, that's dicey if it disrupts the timing and the rhythm of a play. And that's what happened a lot of times early on in the season. There was a play in the preseason where it looked like C.J. overthrew Jaden Higgins. And it was actually that Higgins had kind of thrown in a little hesy step and got clean, but he ended up being a step short of where he was supposed to be. It was a Perfect pass by C.J. stroud. But when you watch it in real time, you're like, oh, boy, CJ's inaccurate. What's going on here? Like, no.

[Sean Pendergast]

Well, it's so much easier to blame the quarterback.

[Cole Thompson]

That's why.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, right, right. But I think that was a Lot of that was. Some of the process for Jaden Higgins is like, yeah, you can do some of that cool and funky stuff, but first and foremost, you got to be. You got to hit your spots on time and in rhythm, and that was one of the things that improved as the year went along.

[Cole Thompson]

Would you say both that while Jaden Higgins, you feel confident can be a quality wide receiver, the bigger wild card right now is Jalen Nolce?

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, I would say so. Just because we've. There's a little more. Higgins is a little more proven at this point. You know, Noel, I think, had a harder time kind of cracking that rotation last year. I. You know, and I. The thing. One of the things I like about Noel, and this is separate from the wide receiver question, is the juice he gives you in the return game, too. Like, he's gonna have a role on the team. Like, Jalen Noel is going to impact the season in some way. But, yeah, those are the two. Those are the two big variables. Now, Seth, you mentioned Keenan Allen. So we have a text. Please ask Seth if he would consider Keenan Allen a good pickup.

[Seth Payne]

No, they see, that's like, he's a veteran player. This is the problem. Yes, he'd be a good pickup, except that. But this is the. This is why there's a salary cap. Like, yeah, there's lots of guys out there. Bring Stefan Diggs in, bring Keenan Allen, and bring Joey Bosa in. Bring all these guys in.

[Sean Pendergast]

Why not? Now you're talking, baby.

[Cole Thompson]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

And because there's so much damn propaganda out there about the cap being a myth, people feel like, yeah, just bring them all in. Like, there. You got to find a balance of believing in and trusting your young draft picks. As long as they're showing you evidence that you should trust them or believe in them. And I think that's exactly where they are with the wide receivers right now. Stefan Diggs, for instance, man, look, he was a model citizen when he was here, at least inside the building. And yes, he'd be a valuable addition, but he also probably wants at least 12 million a year.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Where Jaden Higgins and Jalen Noel are on their rookie contracts, Jalen Noel at this point has way more burst and potential for separation than Stefon Diggs does. Stefan Diggs was very productive last year, did an awesome job, but he's not going to necessarily provide you that same burst that he used to have. And he's 33 years old. You know, coming off of a. Coming off an ACL two years ago, 33 is a really Dicey age for wide receivers. It doesn't make a lot of sense if you feel good about Jalen Noel to say, oh, yeah, let's. Let's bring in a better version of Christian Kirk and spend all that money and delay Jalen Knowles development. And it just get. But because there's. There is a salary cap.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. Well, I gotta spoil everybody's Friday morning by bringing up the cap being real. Seth, what do you know?

[Seth Payne]

We didn't really delve into it as much yesterday, but I went and read a few articles out of Boston when Stefon Diggs was released, and people kind of being skeptical about it. And at that time, I think they were at least pretending like the AJ Brown trade wasn't a done deal. Yeah, but he was like, he did a lot of things last year better than he'd done since his rookie year.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Like his catch rate, his drop rate, some of these, his yardage after catch. Like, he, he performed really, really well in limited snaps.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yes.

[Seth Payne]

And, you know, he's 32 years old. He's coming off of an ACL injury. Like, you got to factor all of that into it.

[Cole Thompson]

So what you're telling me is that go get Brandon Cooks. That's what everyone.

[Sean Pendergast]

Oh, God, no, no, no. He ditched us, man.

[Cole Thompson]

I saw people actually commenting not too long ago. Brandon Cooks is that wide receiver. 3 is the perfect addition for the ditched us.

[Sean Pendergast]

No, I. Man, I hold grudges. No. All right, headlines coming up next. We had a schedule release yesterday in baseball. We'll get you up to speed on everything going on with the schedule next year. Games resuming tonight. The Orioles come into town. We've got items to get to here in headlines.

[Seth Payne]

We'll do that.

[Sean Pendergast]

Coming up next,

[Seth Payne]

Pain and Pendergast with today's headlines.

[Sean Pendergast]

All right, let's get to headlines, starting with the Astros. They're back at it. Tonight. The games resume. The Astros, three games out in the AL west, game and a half back for the last wild card spot in the American League, hosting the Baltimore Orioles, who are one of the jillions of teams in that big swamp we like to call the American League playoff race. Peter Lambert on the mound tonight. The Astros four games under.500. They need to stop treading water here at some point. We need a nice little burst here right up from the Astros.

[Seth Payne]

Well, that's what we've been. You know, this, please. They. They had that stretch where they kept winning series, but I need to see one of these awesome, exciting, you know, win 10 games in a row.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Win 12 games out of 14.

[Sean Pendergast]

That's what I'm saying.

[Cole Thompson]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

A little 12 and two run.

[Cole Thompson]

How about start off with the sweet

[Sean Pendergast]

this weekend from there. Yeah. Yeah, that'd be good.

[Seth Payne]

Against the Rangers, who are like. Yes. Seemingly undefeatable at a. With an above.500 record.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

The. You. You just. How do you. How do you even beat a team that's slightly above average? Well, they're playing above average.

[Sean Pendergast]

They're playing the Orioles.

[Seth Payne]

The. The. Yeah, no, that's. Sorry, I'm saying gaining ground against. No, no, no, you're. No, I did different.

[Sean Pendergast]

Gotcha. Gotcha. Speaking of the Rangers, that is who the Astros will open the season against next year. My first thought when I saw the schedule drop yesterday. Honestly, guys. And Cole Thompson is in with Seth and I today.

[Cole Thompson]

Sup, friends?

[Sean Pendergast]

The is. Is that the NFL does things so much better than Major League Baseball. Some things. I think. I think Manfred's done a good job with some of the initiatives that he's had with baseball. You know, pitch, clock, everything else. I think that's been a success.

[Seth Payne]

Honestly. He's. Every single thing he's done where people say that's not going to save baseball

[Sean Pendergast]

seems to have worked.

[Seth Payne]

The sum total of all of it is. Yeah, it adds up. And they've done a lot. They've made a lot of improvements.

[Sean Pendergast]

Absolutely. Now, on the marketing side, though, which. This is what I'm about to talk about. The NFL schedule release is this buildup. It's count. It's almost a countdown to the schedule release. The Astro schedule. I got in an email from the team at 3:00 yesterday afternoon. Like, yeah, I think there's something there where baseball could make a big deal out of the schedule. Schedule coming out.

[Seth Payne]

You know, especially with baseball, it's an easier sell for the. I know people that want to take a vacation or something. Or you're. Yeah. I like, there's just so many more. There's. There's more games, there's more angles. There's all of that. That. Yeah. But. But also part of the problem with baseball is they do so many things that just simply. The time of the year.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

That. It's like. You just. It is every. It's like, okay, well, I'm still in the middle of this season.

[Sean Pendergast]

That's a great point. Yeah, that's a great point. The May. The NFL schedule releases in May. When going on. This is. At least. They did it during the All Star.

[Cole Thompson]

It's the day before we go back to baseball. Look at 20, 27.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Look, I don't even. Look, there's an actual. Think about the difference. Logistically though, I get it. Like, think about the traveling secretary in baseball. You got all these games. You got. You've got 81 games that you got to figure out for road trips and everything else like that. Football, like, all right, we got. We got eight or nine games we got to worry about. And they don't even have a travel secretary.

[Sean Pendergast]

No. No. So open the season against the Rangers on March 25. They will close the season with six big divisional away games against the Athletics and the Angels. So full schedules out. You can go find it on the Astros social media. Major League Baseball. This story yesterday. Cracking down on the use of AI in dugouts in helping with. In game decision making. Really interesting article in the Athletics. The memo came down from the league's VP of baseball ops, whose name is Morgan Sword, which is a great name. And apparently the iPads in the dugout that they've been using, of course, you know, you see players using them to take a look at video of swings and things like that. They've got statcast stuff on there. They've got ABS analytics on the. On the iPad. They've got a custom tab, they call it on there where basically it's all the stuff that would normally be in like gigantic binders 20 years ago or 30 years ago, pre iPad days.

[Cole Thompson]

Right.

[Sean Pendergast]

What they're cracking down on is apparently there are some teams that are taking pitch. Pitch to pitch information and putting it into AI so that their hitters can make better decisions on their subsequent at bats in games.

[Cole Thompson]

So what you're telling me is that everybody is shooting in baseball?

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, well, only a third of the team.

[Sean Pendergast]

30 teams.

[Seth Payne]

And our biggest concern is that even though this wasn't illegal or anything to be begin with, we don't even suspect that the Astros were doing it.

[Sean Pendergast]

Zero chance the Astros are doing this under this regime.

[Seth Payne]

They're playing solitaire on their iPads. It's just that I don't. Whatever edge they used to have, Snapchat

[Cole Thompson]

filters are all they're using on those iPads these days.

[Seth Payne]

I don't know. There's. There's part of the. Okay. Cracking down on this. It just makes me a little wary because I'm always the. I don't know how you're gonna, like. I don't know how you're gonna put the genie back in the bottle on some of this stuff. Like at some point with every six months, there's some new innovation in technology that makes it even that much easier to use AI or like a device or your Google glasses that cool. It wasn't hurting my enjoyment of the game.

[Sean Pendergast]

No, that's the thing. It's a really good point, Seth. When I'm reading this article yesterday, I'm like, okay, I guess I'm trying to figure out like why and where they're drawing the line on this stuff. And I guess this feels like something like they're, they're, they're, they're hand. They're kind of almost like cherry picking things that they feel like the human brain should still do in the game as opposed to a computerized brain.

[Seth Payne]

Right.

[Sean Pendergast]

You know, it should be up to humans to decipher what a pitcher's doing with them. The chess game. They don't want the iPad playing the chess game between hitter and pitcher for the hitter. Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Like the Padres out there though saying like, okay, well we can't afford 200amonth for Chad GPT. Plus that these other high dollar teams can do it. Right, Right. Yeah, yeah, I get that. I. But again, the genie's out of the bottle. Like they're using computers and analytics so much more and spending so much more money on it already. I guess this is kind of that whole the arms race to nowhere that you get when you just keep spending more and more and more on technology so you can get a minimal if or just keep up.

[Sean Pendergast]

It's the Cold War of 2020.

[Seth Payne]

Right, right. So all these teams are spending more and more to get less and less of an edge or just to keep up with everybody else that if they collectively they probably want to. The owners probably want to tamp down on it and say, yeah, like if only. Screw the, screw the integrity of the game. We just got to stop throwing all this money out of window.

[Sean Pendergast]

I guess the distinction here is that this is in game. They're cracking down on like in the dugout in game and they can do whatever they want with the arms race of stuff that they do outside of those two and a half hours a night that you got four hours before the game.

[Cole Thompson]

Go have fun with the AI.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, yeah.

[Seth Payne]

That's why I would say yeah, but why not go back to just like let's get rid of the iPads completely.

[Sean Pendergast]

Exactly.

[Seth Payne]

You know, you want a little bit more offense. I'm guess like, I'm guessing that. I'm guessing the iPad stuff benefits the batters more than the pitchers, you know, especially when it comes to picking up towels and everything like that. So just, yeah, just get rid of it. Just don't allow, don't allow anything electronic in the dugout.

[Sean Pendergast]

No. In fact, cut off the electricity in the dugouts all together.

[Seth Payne]

You guys use wooden bats?

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Nobody uses wooden bats anymore. Like, you telling me you can't keep it. Get dumbed down intentionally.

[Cole Thompson]

Did you guys hear Bryce Harper saying when he was going into the Home Run Derby he wants to use metal bats?

[Sean Pendergast]

No.

[Cole Thompson]

Oh my God.

[Sean Pendergast]

Dude, someone. You couldn't, you couldn't, you couldn't have

[Cole Thompson]

fans in the stands there because if somebody would get drilled in the face.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Well, yeah. Legal use the illegal. Yeah, that'd be awesome.

[Sean Pendergast]

Oh, that'd be awesome.

[Cole Thompson]

Those hundred and we'd have 175 miles per hour.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. 200.

[Cole Thompson]

The Jack Caglion home run that hit the third deck would go out at like two.

[Sean Pendergast]

That'd be normalized.

[Seth Payne]

I do, I think, you know, you remember they had that enhanced games a couple months ago where you're allowed to use steroids. Yeah. If you brought back some of the. Bring back a guy recently retired dudes for a home run derby that's enhanced, you know, or even bring. Barry Bonds is in really good shape. You can let him back on the juice right now.

[Sean Pendergast]

Oh my God. Steroid home run Derby.

[Cole Thompson]

Just give him six months. He'll figure it out.

[Sean Pendergast]

They used to have a show called Home Run Derby back in like the 60s that had all like Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle. Like they, they used to replay it on espn like in the eight. They'd replay it and I would tell my dad, I'm like, this is amazing. They should do this now and do Home run Derby. But, but I like your idea, Seth.

[Seth Payne]

If you want to watch a steroid home run derby, just go watch, go to onto a softball field somewhere and watch beer league games. You can pick out the guys.

[Cole Thompson]

So I don't know about your kids, but did they ever play slugfest growing up?

[Sean Pendergast]

No.

[Cole Thompson]

So slugfest, you could literally rip like 300 mile fastballs with Barry Bonds and Mark McGuire and then if you did.

[Sean Pendergast]

Is it a video game?

[Cole Thompson]

It's a video game.

[Sean Pendergast]

Okay.

[Cole Thompson]

And then if you didn't like it, it, you could go ahead and fight the pitcher on the mound.

[Sean Pendergast]

And if you won the fight, you

[Cole Thompson]

could go and get in first base.

[Sean Pendergast]

That's my kind of baseball right there. All right, coming up next, the Texans. What is the trade value on the core players on the Texans? Bill Barnwell had a really interesting piece. There's a lot of woods in here and there. This is going to factor in at some point here in the next couple years when they've got to make decisions on who to sign. We'll discuss this coming up next.

[Seth Payne]

All new drinks are now at McDonald's

[Sean Pendergast]

with refreshers like the Strawberry Watermelon Refresher and the Mango Pineapple Refresher with popping Boba to crafted sodas like the Sprite Berry Blast with berry flavors and cold foam. Who knew ice cold drinks could be so fire six?

[Seth Payne]

All new drinks are here now at McDonald's.

[Cole Thompson]

Refreshers contain caffeine.

[Sean Pendergast]

I'm Tobin Heath.

[Seth Payne]

And I'm Kristen Press.

[Cole Thompson]

We're World cup champions, Olympians and the

[Seth Payne]

hosts of the recap show. Week in and week out, we sit down with sports legends, cultural icons and global change makers to talk everything from clutch games to causes that matter. This is about creating the future of women's sports. A future that's honest, inclusive and real.

[Cole Thompson]

Join us for our reimagined journey.

[Seth Payne]

Follow and listen to the recap show

[Sean Pendergast]

wherever you get your podcasts. All right, so Bill Barnwell of ESPN has a, has an article out and, and it's a classic Barnwell article where he's got the trade value. It's an annual article. He does the NFL trade tiers players were players that are worth first round picks by team. And I think this is obviously this is just one man's opinion, Bill Barnwell, but I think this is relevant stuff for a couple of these guys that we're about to talk about for the, for the Houston Texans. He, so he categorizes the players in he's got players that are multiple first round picks and more. He's got a first round pick and more so like a first and a third. And then he's got players that are worth just a first round pick pick. The Texans have six players that are mentioned in this article in these various categories. Let's start at the top. The two players that are worth two first round picks and more are Will Anderson Jr. Who is going nowhere.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, no big surprise here.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. And C.J. stroud who barn and Barnwell said in this article that he talked to people around the league about Stroud and the opinions were very diverse. You know, there are people that still have great belief in CJ Stroud out there that, that, that he can be a franchise quarterback. And then there's other people that I think Barnwell kind of categorizes is not anti Stroud necessarily, but he described one of them as a long pause in a sigh before something far less confident came out of their mouth. And the one quote is I'm glad it's not my problem.

[Seth Payne]

Quote.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Oh, man. Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

One team said, I'm glad it's not my problem. This was a team that already has its franchise quarterback. So maybe they had as much to do with the situation they're in that they we've got our guy.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. That long. Speaker 3 you know what? I think if you ask a GM about this or a head coach or something, you're thinking, man, this is kind of one of those moves that you would make where this is that I'm either getting fired or, or it's going to work out or I'm getting fired. And it's, and it could very easily go either way except that we know what the upside is with CJ Stroud and if we can get it out of him. Like I immediately I thought of Chris Ballard with the Colts. Like I, you know, look, they traded super aggressively for Sauce Gardner who's a really, really good player. But you trade two first round pick picks for a cornerback.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

You know, like a really good cornerback. But like that's the same type of move that even though CJ Is not as good a player as of yet as Sauce Gardner is, he's a quarterback and that's a team that, man, that they've built good teams up there and done everything except actually had a quarterback that you feel good about.

[Cole Thompson]

If I add in one Carson Wentz trade.

[Seth Payne]

Right? Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

[Cole Thompson]

I say that was what Chris Ballard

[Sean Pendergast]

did to go ahead and throw it

[Cole Thompson]

down on the table and sit.

[Sean Pendergast]

They traded like a first and a third or first and a third round. Yeah, yeah. For Carson Wentz and that didn't work out.

[Seth Payne]

And Carson Wentz's flaws were already well known, you know, like, so the upside, I think most of us, even the guy that gave the long pause is going to look at that and say he, I bet that guy wouldn't be surprised if somebody traded for CJ Stroud for two first round picks. But. And it would make more sense than trading a first round pick plus more for Carson.

[Sean Pendergast]

Right, right. Like a lot of these guys in this article for any of the teams, like for example, Josh Allen, he's, he categorizes as seven first round picks, which of course you're not allowed to do. So there's certain guys in this article that's just his way of saying certain guys like Allen Mahomes, a couple other guys in there which actually wouldn't make

[Cole Thompson]

sense anymore because if you did not trade.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. Like he literally got traded, so you know what his value is. But he has a few guys that are just like untouchable in this article. I think what's interesting about C.J. stroud, of the two guys here, like Will Anderson Jr. It's not even a conversation. They, we know how they feel about Will. They just gave him a big deal, big contract. The Stroud one is interesting because they haven't given him a contract. And if, if CJ Has a season where this is even a talking point in March, trading him, then he's not worth two first round picks anymore. You know, he's not worth two first round picks anymore because he's one year older. He's one cheap year burned, the cheapest year he's ever going to be again. Because I think even a depressed asset, CJ Is going to make more than, than a rookie contract.

[Cole Thompson]

Sure.

[Sean Pendergast]

So you're, you're closer to paying him now. They're not trading C.J. stroud, obviously. They're, they're, you know, he's their quarterback going into this year. So. But like I saw two first round picks.

[Seth Payne]

I'm like the Wentz trade was the interesting one. Remember, it was a second and third, but it was a conditional second.

[Sean Pendergast]

Right.

[Seth Payne]

And because he met the requirements, the snap count requirement, it turned into a first round pick.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, yeah.

[Seth Payne]

So that would be. Yeah. Like you could see something pretty ornate with C.J. but that. Okay, so if C.J. has the exact same year this year, except for the playoffs, let's say he's boring in the playoffs or whatever. Do these people answer. Does, does Barnwell give him the same trade grade next year then?

[Sean Pendergast]

I would think so. I think if CJ has the same year regular season this year that he did last year, there's a better chance that he gets paid by the Texans.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

You know.

[Seth Payne]

No, I know. But, but would his trade value be his trade?

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, I think he might. Yeah, I think. Yeah, I think he would. I think.

[Cole Thompson]

Well, think about it from the standpoint of you still could technically have two years left on the deal because if you want to franchise tag him in 2027 so you would have an extra year to. Is he the long term guy?

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, man. C.J. this is so much more complicated than it felt like it was going to be two years ago with CJ Stroud so much more.

[Cole Thompson]

So like the GM saying. Glad stop my problem.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, right, right, right. I, I kind of get that GM saying that about C.J. all right. The player that the Texans. So, so will Anderson Jr according to Bill Barnwell. His opinion will Anderson Jr CJ Stroud worth two first round picks and more. I'm curious if listeners text in I'm curious if you agree with that trade value assessment. There is one player they have that's worth one first round pick and more and this one is very interesting to me. It's Derek Stingley Jr. Whose extension kicks in. This actually 2026. It kicks in next season. This would be his fifth year option of his first round rookie deal because he got drafted in 2026. So the contract kicks in next year.

[Seth Payne]

And this is like in this we were talking about during the break. You know, it feels like it's way, way off in the future and everything. But all of these deals that weren't going to start kicking in until later on, I mean it's time to pay the piper starting next season. They're already the Texans forever. Were if you looked out a couple years ahead, they were in really good cap shape. They're over the cap for 2027 right now. In 2028 they have the most money in the league committed to their defense. And if you look at all of the really good defensive players and then if you add Calum Bullock and Kamari Lasseter into the mix mix, if they get extensions after this year, that's a it, it, it might get to the point where. All right, weird. We gotta, we gotta start, we gotta start sloughing off some of this.

[Sean Pendergast]

You were having cap conniptions two segments ago over signing a veteran wide receiver.

[Seth Payne]

I know.

[Sean Pendergast]

Like you're very calm right now based on what you're talking about.

[Seth Payne]

Like I'm calm. No, no, no. Because it's so far off in the future.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Seth Payne]

But like this on the. No, I'm saying I'm not like upset about or anything. You can manage it. There's time to. But one of the things you do to manage it is you make some tough decisions on guys that you really like and are good players. You trade them away.

[Sean Pendergast]

That's why, that's why that's where the

[Seth Payne]

Lions are right now.

[Cole Thompson]

Right.

[Sean Pendergast]

100%. That that's why this article is so interesting to me. The interesting part of this article really has nothing to do with Will Anderson Jr. And C.J. stroud being the marquee guys. Although Stroud's always going to be an interesting topic pick. It's the Derek Stingley Jr. Worth a first round pick and more. Or Kamari Lassiter, who is one of the players that Barnwell says you could get A first round pick for Kamari Lasseter. He also has Daniel Hunter and Nico Collins in that category as well. We can talk about the Neil in a second because I think Barnwell brings up an interesting point about Daniel, but I think this, that you framed it. Seth. The day of reckoning is coming in the secondary for the Texans. Kalen Bullock was just rated the 10th best safety in football by front offices around the league. So I'm a little surprised. Kaleb. Although safety is not necessarily a position that you trade first for, but I think Kalen Bullock is right on the cusp of these Nico Hunter and Lassiter guys being worth the first round pick. There's a day of reckoning coming where they either gonna have to do some major credit card cap gymnastics to keep this secondary together or they're gonna have to make a decision that probably involves one of these two cornerbacks in a trade. That's why this article is interesting to me is if you had to move one of them right now, would you move Derek Stingley Jr. For say a first and a third? Although you got Sauce got him two first in New York.

[Cole Thompson]

So we have on the text line, Stingley has to be worth more than Sauce. Right. Because he needs to go for more. He's indisputably better.

[Sean Pendergast]

Okay, so let's say, let's let's just to be conservative, called a first and a second for Stingley.

[Seth Payne]

I don't care. I don't. He's indisputably better, but he's also indisputably more injury prone.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Which is something people are going to take into account.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. Yeah. Although Sauce was banged up at the end of last year, but yes, he's. Stingley undeniably has had his, has had his injury issues. Now he played through a lot of stuff, but. Yeah, so, okay, so, but Seth, would you rather, would you rather get a first and another high pick for Stingley? If you had to do a trade right now of one of the two cornerbacks, would you take a first round pick, pick for Kamari Lasseter or a first and a, you know, called a second for Derek Stingley Jr. You're a jerk.

[Seth Payne]

I, I'm torn because I like, I love everything about Kamari Lasseter.

[Sean Pendergast]

Right.

[Cole Thompson]

Take the cyanide pill. It's an easy way out.

[Seth Payne]

There you go. Yeah, I think, I think when you go for just overall total coverage ability, just his, his, I would trade last.

[Sean Pendergast]

You'd go Lassiter. You. You hate these exercises.

[Seth Payne]

I despise them. That's why that's why I've turned down so many opportunities to be a gm.

[Cole Thompson]

Is it wrong?

[Seth Payne]

I really do. I was like, I'm on flying on some private jet with a billionaire. I'm like, listen, at the end of the day, one of my biggest weaknesses is making hard decisions.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yes.

[Seth Payne]

So I don't know if this is. I don't know if this is the job for me.

[Sean Pendergast]

I didn't put that on my resume. This is not something you should know about me. That's.

[Seth Payne]

That's my go to answer in a. In any kind of a job interview. Like, what's your biggest weakness? Like, listen, I know a lot of people tell you I care too much or whatever. I just will delay any big decision as long as possible and ultimately just punt on it and I.

[Sean Pendergast]

And I'll look like I'm agonizing over it.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. So I would, I would just say. I would say, listen, Seth, you might love. Sometimes you got to kill the people you love. And so you just got. You're gonna have to go ahead and take Kamara Lasseter out behind the shed and shoot him

[Sean Pendergast]

right there.

[Cole Thompson]

Is it wrong that I would actually trade Derek Stingley?

[Sean Pendergast]

No. Because I.

[Seth Payne]

No, no, no. I think it's a really, really hard decision.

[Sean Pendergast]

I think I would. And here's the thing. I think the Texans would. I think.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. Well, call. What's your before. What's your reasoning for it?

[Cole Thompson]

It's pretty simple. Two for the price of one.

[Seth Payne]

One.

[Cole Thompson]

If I think that I can afford both, if I can afford Kamari Laster and Kaylin Bullock and get them both signed a long term deal, it's worthy of moving off of a guy like Derek Stingley Jr. To where if, even if I can't get a guy like Kaitlyn Bellock sign long term, I can target a safety with one of those two picks.

[Sean Pendergast]

One of the picks.

[Cole Thompson]

So either way. I personally think that Kamari Laster is the ideal fit for d' amigo Ryan's defense. And I've been screaming that since he was at Georgia. And I remember talking to somebody at the draft one year, I mean the combine one year and said, who's the dude that you don't want to see in the Miko Ryan's defense? And two people said Kamari Last.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Cole Thompson]

So it's like, I think with him, even if you aren't getting the elite number two cornerback in the NFL, the drop off isn't so much to where what you would pay in terms of his annual salary and what you could afford to be able to pay for somebody else to stick around, it might be worthy of it. And I still get two picks back.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, the two picks is big. The two picks is big. The money not kicking in for another couple years with Kamari, potentially, if you give him an extension is also a thing, right?

[Cole Thompson]

Like you get.

[Sean Pendergast]

You get. You got two cheaper years of Kamari still left as opposed to Stingley, who's going to get expensive here fairly quickly. And I think there's things that Kamari does better than Derek Stingley Jr. Also, they're not the money maker. Like, the money maker is shutting down your side of the field. I think Kamari is a really good coverage guy, but Kamari, the physicality in the run game is a big deal with Kamari.

[Seth Payne]

Like, everything Cole said is 100% correct, too. There's an element to this, to D' Amico's philosophy, which is, hey, listen, we're going to concede some things up underneath, but we make an offense pay for it. The kill zone, you know, like we're going to. And guys like Kamari are exactly the kinds of guys when you wonder why. How does Travis. I know it was an. It wasn't a perfect ball that Patrick Mahomes threw at the end of that Chiefs game, but how does a guy like Travis Kelsey bobble the ball like that, right? It's because of the kill zone. Like those guys, it's in their brains. You know, Rasheed Rice. Rasheed Rice almost like almost literally getting decapitated on that play in that game. That's the kind of stuff that adds up over time. Like, these guys are. These guys are like the invading hordes on defense, and Kamari Lasseter is the embodiment of that. And you're right, Cole, that teams are still willing to pay more for the pure coverage traits of Derek Stingley. But Kamari Lasseter might like. You might not have to pay him as much, but you actually. But he's the perfect fit for that defense. And you can make. You can make do or still be really good as long as you get an adequate corner on the other side.

[Sean Pendergast]

I think he's their favorite player. I think the people in charge over there, I think Kamari Lasseter, d' Amico Ryan's unprompted brings up Kamari Lasseter and Will Anderson Jr. And Jalen Petrie to an extent. But I think if we're making this. If we're making this choice, it would be Stingley for more pick. The more picks thing is crucial in this as well. We should point out out because it's not, you know, like all things. If all things are being equal with what you were getting back, it would be Lassiter. But if. But first and more for a guy who's older.

[Cole Thompson]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Going to be more expensive sooner. And may. May. May fit what the Texans ethos is like 92% but Kamari Lassiter fits it 115%.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

You know, it would be Stingley for me.

[Seth Payne]

So. So in line with the way I operate as a gm, I'm going to pull an Eric Dacosta here, here and call up the guy that the team that I just traded for for the Kamari Lasseter. Like. Hey, hey, hey. I messed up. I actually meant to trade you Derek Singley. Cool. We cool.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

All right.

[Sean Pendergast]

The first round pick and second round pick you traded me. Failed. Failed their physical. Yeah, yeah. Sir, you haven't used the picks yet. No, but it failed the physical.

[Cole Thompson]

Don't worry, we're fine.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, hold up.

[Cole Thompson]

He's available for how much? Yeah, sorry, Max, you gotta go.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yep. Yeah.

[Cole Thompson]

Text line even agrees sell high on Stingley stock as long as the value comes.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, yeah.

[Seth Payne]

This is a whole fax machine issue that I had. I didn't know I was our dial up. Our dial up modem got screwed up and the fax, the. The fax was.

[Cole Thompson]

I have a checking and a savings account. The checking account doesn't move on over to the savings account until next Sunday.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's Seth right now. See, I told you had a hard time making decisions. Okay, the other two on here are interesting and we're going to get to in a few minutes. Get to news that you may have missed. Cole's got some stories that we're going to get to. Cole Thompson in studio with Seth and I today and on Monday. The other two players we have not touched upon yet in this article. And if you're just getting in your car. Bill Barnwell has his annual trade value article out. And the Texans. He's got Will Anderson and C.J. stroud worth two firsts and more. He's got Derek Stingley Jr. Worth a first round pick and more. And then he's got three players worth a first round pick. We just hashed out the Kamari Lassiter situation. There's no situation. We just hashed out Kamari Lasseter. The other two are Nico Collins and Daniel Hunter. Hunter is the one that Barnwell kind of does a, you know, a short dive into here and he says this Seth Hunter would be a fascinating case. He turns 32 in October ton of tread on the tires. He's played nearly 8,000pro snaps after coming into the league as a 21 year old. He missed all of 2020 with a neck injury. But he's come back and he's continued to thrive. 27 sacks in his two seasons as a Texan. He would be the ultimate single season rental if the Texans disappointed this coming season and decided to trade away one of their star veterans. I think that's when I saw him starting to go in on Hunter. I'm like, oh, this is going to end with the Texans being like, like last year they were three and five going into the trade deadline.

[Seth Payne]

No. And honestly, I think the whole thing about this is that Danil and the Texans are in a good spot because they're both looking at it. It's like a summer romance in a way. Like, oh, you know what, I'm going to extend my vacation another week. I'm not going home until. But they both know that it's going to end at some point.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Which is like. And that's where when players want fully guaranteed contracts, they, they're out there. All you got to do is sign a shorter term deal. So I think there is a, there's a good chance that as Danielle just continually tacks on a year to his contract every year, that at some point a team like the Rams or somebody that really is like, okay, not the Rams specifically, but that type of team all in where they're looking at, yeah, we're all in on the super bowl this year. This is the one thing we're missing. And we'll go ahead and trade more than we probably should for a guy who's only got one year left on his contract. And Daniel would probably be totally cool with that. Like, I think that might actually be an amicable trade that you get back even though he's only got a year left on his contract at whichever point. I think that, I think that's a very likely scenario that that would be

[Sean Pendergast]

an off season thing. Probably in an off season where the Texans, who I think themselves anticipate being one of those teams you're talking about, Seth, that is in the running for a Super bowl. But they've got these cap issues that are, especially if they got to pay a quarterback, they're going to have cap issues coming up and they look at denial. Hunter at 40 million. Yeah, maybe. I, you know, Barnwell's talking about an in season thing and I think we, I think we can tell from last year. It would have to be A real disaster for the Texans to even consider selling at the trade. They were three and five last year heading into the trade deadline, and they then won nine straight games after that. You know, so I think.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, I mean, that's. This whole exercise is kind of tough because it's hard to envision the Texans not being in a competitive situation. Yeah, yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

You're talking about the Hunter exercise.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, yeah. Or. Yeah. Or really any of these. When you're talking about trading away good players.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

In the middle of a season, it's like it makes more sense for. Yeah, it only really makes sense for a team. Team that's. That's playing poorly.

[Cole Thompson]

So let me poise this to you. Because of. On the text line, they say, I think Nico will be the sacrificial lamb in all.

[Sean Pendergast]

Okay, so he's the last one. We haven't talked about Nico yet. This is where. This goes back to the conversation that we had at 6:25 about the confidence in the wide receiver room. Now they've given Nico more money this year and next year. So Nico's gonna be here, I guess, theoretically. Well, we knew he was going to be here this year.

[Cole Thompson]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

If Jaden Higgins takes a big jump, you know, by the time you're having to make decisions with Nico in an extension, you're going to have more data on what Jaden Higgins actually is. And Jaylen Noel and Jalen Noel. I. I bring up Higgins because one, he's been better than Noel and two, he kind of. He kind of fits that silhouette of Nico Collins where, like big frame, wide receiver.

[Cole Thompson]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. So you. So if you're trying to build it like a. Like Seth, you say sometimes building it like a basketball team where you're putting different body types in there. If Nico, if somehow Nico is, I won't say expendable, but if you've, you know, if you're forced into a situation where you got to make hard decisions on guys. To me, any decision you're making with Nico Collins being worth, say, a first round pick, it has everything to do with what Jaden Higgins looks like.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. No, I think if Jaden Higgins ends up. Really, If Jaden Higgins pulls a Nico Collins and all of a sudden becomes, you know, the guy that Nico Collins is, that he's probably. Probably one of the more expendable guys on the team. If you also factor in his injury history.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yes.

[Seth Payne]

And I mean, that's the big part of it, is that he's. He's making really good money. He does all those things.

[Cole Thompson]

Things.

[Seth Payne]

But It's. I mean, it's just. That's a big hypothetical. You know, I'm optimistic about Jaden Hickens, but, man, it's like Nico. Nico does become a force that you wouldn't have imagined he could be after his first two years.

[Sean Pendergast]

Just to put it. Put it this way, I'm way more confident in, hey, if you got to trade Stingley, you still got Lassiter, and you got that whole defense doing their thing, as opposed to if you got to trade Nico. Hey, just slide Jaden Higgins in there. Like, we. We don't have enough on Higgins yet to be confident in that approach.

[Cole Thompson]

All time is, hey, look at this. Wide receiver draft class this upcoming year.

[Sean Pendergast]

Oh, it's always that hit or miss. For every Justin Jefferson, there's a trail on Burks. That's a. That's a hit or miss.

[Cole Thompson]

How about Jalen Rager literally going one pick right before Justin.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, let's. Let's do some news you may have missed. Cole, you got some stories for us here. Things that the people may have missed. Something offbeat, maybe even sports adjacent.

[Cole Thompson]

Yeah. What the heck is going on with the Carolina Lottery?

[Sean Pendergast]

Okay, explain this to me. I saw some chatter about this. Yes.

[Cole Thompson]

So yesterday or earlier this week, there was a man in South Carolina who walked into a convenience store.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Cole Thompson]

And won a scratch off for $500,000.

[Sean Pendergast]

Okay.

[Cole Thompson]

The reasoning behind it, A vision told me to go ahead and place my bet on this one. A lottery ticket.

[Sean Pendergast]

He went and got one. So he's not one of these guys that goes and buys like, 15. Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

That's my first question is like, yeah. How often do you play this guy?

[Cole Thompson]

The quote was, I had a vision. It told me to go get a ticket at the Cracker Jack store. So I bought two.

[Sean Pendergast]

Okay.

[Cole Thompson]

I bought two $10 scratch offs at the Cracker Jack on Pendleton street in Greenville. One of them, a gold extra vault play game, and it turned out to be a $500,000.

[Sean Pendergast]

I think this guy's full of crap.

[Seth Payne]

Is there any information in there at all about how often he buys scratch off tickets, though? That's like, if this was like, I had a vision and I never play scratch off. And then I go in and I get the scratch off.

[Sean Pendergast]

I had a vision to go to lizards yesterday.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

I think just like the 80 days before that. Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

This guy never plays scratch off. And then he. He had a vision and he did it. And he's not a guy who is acting on his visions all the time. A Lot of people have visions, like 10 visions a day, and they act on all of them. If that's the case, then I think that, yeah, I'll put this into my. I'll put this into my bucket of reasons that I think this is all a simulation and there's starting to be some glitches.

[Cole Thompson]

Who's scamming us, but, like, go north to North Carolina.

[Sean Pendergast]

You said lotteries, plural.

[Cole Thompson]

So there was another woman who has insomnia, and she was fiddling around late at night playing an online lottery game, placed a $30 bet and won $150,000. Price.

[Sean Pendergast]

Okay, well, now she can afford a sleep doctor.

[Seth Payne]

All right. The first one was kind of unique because he had. He had a vision.

[Cole Thompson]

He had a vision.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

The second one, like, okay, I don't like this. Could you not tell this story about, like, the vast majority of wins stuff gambling online or what have you?

[Cole Thompson]

Why am I not lucky enough to win $150,000 when I'm up at 3 in the morning?

[Seth Payne]

I feel like I have to just explain the basic statistics and probability behind all of this. Yeah, that's what happens. It's like everybody who wins a lottery has a story about what they're doing when they won the lottery. Oh, you're going to be a sucker. Somebody's going to take you for some money here.

[Sean Pendergast]

Cole, Seth, you got two people now that are easily sold to that are doing a show with you.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, but. And you're the guy. Guys who flipped me on my whole Kamari Lasseter trade.

[Sean Pendergast]

That's true.

[Seth Payne]

Sitting here acting like I'm Charlie. Common sense.

[Sean Pendergast]

All right, what's the next one?

[Cole Thompson]

Okay, so Jaden Fielder just got traded to the Astros. Yeah, he played against the Fayetteville Woodpeckers this past season, the team that he is going to.

[Sean Pendergast]

So the Astros do have a team called the Woodpeckers.

[Cole Thompson]

The Fayetteville Woodpeckers.

[Sean Pendergast]

Asheville is the Volunteers.

[Cole Thompson]

Yes.

[Sean Pendergast]

Okay.

[Cole Thompson]

Okay, so it's Fayetteville.

[Sean Pendergast]

Fayetteville Woodpeckers.

[Cole Thompson]

Okay.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Cole Thompson]

So anyway, anyways, funny enough, he has been drilled nine times this season at high eight. Six of them came against the Fayetteville Woodpeckers. So they went on social media yesterday and wrote him an apology letter and showed all six times he got beamed.

[Sean Pendergast]

Okay, see, that. That is. That's crazier, like, odds wise to me than the two lottery stories you just shared that Jaden Fielder has been. Has been beamed nine times, and six of them were from the same team.

[Cole Thompson]

From the same team that he's now playing, and so they wrote him an apology letter, and in the apology, they showed all six times he got drilled.

[Seth Payne]

Hey, is. How many different pitchers were there?

[Cole Thompson]

Oh, he got drilled three times in one game.

[Sean Pendergast]

Oh, no. You know what'd be great? That's a great question, Seth. It'd be awesome if it was all the same guy. Like, the same guy beamed him six times.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

With a new teammate. Hey, do we know is Jaden Fielder kind of chunky like his grandfather and his. His dad?

[Cole Thompson]

No, it looks nothing like it.

[Sean Pendergast]

Okay. Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

I don't lie. I'm not super stoked about having yet another Jaden in Houston. Jaden's in the Jalens and everything. It turns out like, it looks like one in three people born 23 years ago were named Jaden or Jalen.

[Sean Pendergast]

Feels like it spelled with four different comparisons.

[Cole Thompson]

Way to be able to make it work so everyone figures it out.

[Seth Payne]

Yep. Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

What else you got?

[Cole Thompson]

Did you know that the record for the hook tee shot is only 84ft?

[Sean Pendergast]

What is the. What do you mean?

[Cole Thompson]

You know, the. The. The one that was. The one that was founded by the Harlem Globetrotters.

[Sean Pendergast]

The hook. The.

[Cole Thompson]

The skyhook shot.

[Sean Pendergast]

Oh, the sky hook shot.

[Cole Thompson]

Okay.

[Sean Pendergast]

I thought you were talking about golf.

[Cole Thompson]

I didn't even know. So the sky hook shot. So apparently an Egyptian basketball player broke the record. And the part that I found that was so interesting, the record was only 82ft. So, like, some college kid could probably

[Sean Pendergast]

wrote the record for making a hook shot.

[Cole Thompson]

Making a hook shot shot. The longest hook shot in the world is only 82ft. You just.

[Sean Pendergast]

Was he just sitting there trying all day?

[Cole Thompson]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

I don't know.

[Cole Thompson]

He had a representative for the Guinness World Records there.

[Seth Payne]

You got it. That's. That's why it's a record. I think there's always. Because you got to have, like, a Guinness Book of World Records observer there and everything to accredit the whole thing. Yeah. I'm sure, like, a bunch of people have pulled this off on the playground at some point, but I feel like

[Sean Pendergast]

Steph Curry could do it. I feel like it would take. I feel like it would take Steph, like, four shots to do it.

[Cole Thompson]

And then he also made the backward shots of behind the head shots.

[Sean Pendergast]

That's only 90ft, nine. Okay. So he made both of them.

[Cole Thompson]

He made both of them, and now he's in the guest world record book. But I'm like, I've seen people. Like, I've seen, dude, perfect people.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Cole Thompson]

Make, like, shots from 200ft.

[Sean Pendergast]

So this guy gets the record just because he's got somebody standing there with a.

[Cole Thompson]

Standing there with a clipboard next to him.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. The Guinness Book of World Records was always a big deal back, Seth, when you and I were kids, I don't know if you had, like, book order day at school.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, yeah, we talked about this the other day. Oh, you weren't in. We were talking about the things we used to do when we didn't have Internet. Yeah. Just sit and look through the Guinness Book of World Record.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. Yeah. My favorite was the guy with the longest fingernails.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Like all, like, swirling around like snakes off of his hand. I like that one.

[Seth Payne]

That's actually on that list of least popular hobbies of women. Women's least popular hobbies that men have. Yeah, that's right below online gambling and porn.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yes. And cigars.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. Trying to get. Trying to win the world's longest fingernail.

[Sean Pendergast]

Longest fingernail records. Yeah. I like the Mount Rushmore of Guinness Book of World Records records. The long fingernail guy. The tallest dudes in the world standing next to the shortest dude in the world in one picture.

[Cole Thompson]

What is that, like, like eight feet?

[Sean Pendergast]

He's like eight foot something.

[Cole Thompson]

And the other one is like, what, two foot nine something?

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. Like it's. It looks like Frankenstein standing next to a leprechaun. And. And then. Oh, the fat mo. The fat twins on the mopeds. Riding on the mopeds.

[Seth Payne]

That was the record for, I think,

[Sean Pendergast]

the fattest set of twins. Yeah, yeah.

[Seth Payne]

And they just put them on. I don't think they were like fattest twins to ride a moped.

[Cole Thompson]

No.

[Sean Pendergast]

I don't think they were setting a land speed record or anything like that. On the mopeds. Yeah. All right, what else? What else you got?

[Cole Thompson]

Did you hear about the Blue Angels incident in Pencil, Florida?

[Sean Pendergast]

No.

[Cole Thompson]

Okay. So earlier this past week, they were doing the air show down in Pensacola. And because of it's on the beach, a lot of people will just, instead of buying t, just go sit by the water and watch his planes go. Fly on by.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, yeah.

[Cole Thompson]

So usually the Blue Angels do a stunt at the very end where they fly low, but apparently now there is a military investigation because of how low they flew towards the fans. Apparently the reverb of the air that carries on because of the speed of flight is less than the speed of sound. It ricocheted, and you had umbrellas and chairs and people flying all over into the water. People. People were losing that. Were losing their b. Because of how low it Was five feet ahead of their heads.

[Sean Pendergast]

What? It was that low.

[Cole Thompson]

Go look at the bit there's. So there's. If you go in the rundown, there's a video of how low they were flying and you could see as they're passing on by looking at it right now, smokes.

[Sean Pendergast]

Okay.

[Seth Payne]

It's on the load for mine when I did that, so I didn't see it. Is it really five feet? Did they say?

[Cole Thompson]

I think, I think it's. I think they said seven feet.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, I'm watching it.

[Seth Payne]

That world's tallest man was out there. He'd be. He would have lost his record right that moment. He's only 6 foot 4.

[Sean Pendergast]

We have a new tallest human record holder. Really? Somebody bigger than him?

[Seth Payne]

No.

[Sean Pendergast]

Nope. This 7 foot 9 guy just took over the title. That's bigger than set. Somebody's exaggerating how close it was. I mean, it's close, don't get me wrong. And there's no denying that these people all got tossed around pretty good.

[Seth Payne]

My favorite thing about these stories like this was something similar happened with some helicopters a couple weeks ago. And my favorite thing on social media is when like actual, actual ex military pilots will weigh in and be like, well actually, yeah, look, they'll probably get reprimanded for this because you're supposed to do this or that. And then 29 other self proclaimed experts will tell this military veteran why he's dead wrong and he's un American. Like, listen man, I'm just explaining the way it works. Okay? Yeah, you're not supposed to do this. All right. They'll probably get reprimanded. It'll probably get kind of smoothed over by like, oh, you hate America. Oh, you idiot. It.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, it's not seven feet. Well, you can never tell with the angle from a, from a cell phone. It's close though.

[Cole Thompson]

But like imagine you try to spend a lovely day at the beach, then you end up in the er. What happened? I got hit by an umbrella.

[Sean Pendergast]

Everybody I'm seeing in this video seems pretty stoked about it. They're like, oh, they're like cheering about the plane.

[Seth Payne]

Oh yeah, everybody's always excited about it.

[Sean Pendergast]

It's just what happens.

[Seth Payne]

That's what I'm telling you though. But then even like the people in the military be like, yeah, you're really like, you gotta, you gotta follow whatever the protocol was for that day. And then people get mad at the people who are just pointing out the way the military actually handles it.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yep.

[Seth Payne]

Personally, I'm cool with them holding Their pilots to a certain standard. Like, I kind of would like them to follow the rules that they're supposed

[Sean Pendergast]

to like the Daredevil pilots to get really close to the crowd. That's fun. It's a fun, fun day at the beach.

[Cole Thompson]

Last one for you. You guys know how Pat McAfee has deals with WWE, but he also does stuff with Game Day where he has the. The kick. The kicking for like $150,000. Of course.

[Sean Pendergast]

It's one. It's. It's.

[Cole Thompson]

It's.

[Sean Pendergast]

It's one of the funnest things on Saturday morning.

[Cole Thompson]

Cody Rhodes is never allowed to go on and do.

[Sean Pendergast]

Oh, my God.

[Cole Thompson]

Had you seen this?

[Sean Pendergast]

I saw this yesterday. Oh, dude.

[Cole Thompson]

So. So if you haven't seen this, Cody Rhodes is at. I think it's a fan. Fanatic Fest.

[Sean Pendergast]

Fanatics Fest.

[Cole Thompson]

So he's at Fanatics Fest, and they give him about maybe seven or eight chances to just go ahead and get it off the ground. It literally can't even get six inches.

[Sean Pendergast]

See?

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's like. He's got, like. He's got no concept whatsoever about how to kick a football.

[Cole Thompson]

Like, bad luck if he has to have this on the show.

[Seth Payne]

Is he born in Luxembourg or something? Like, why. How does he not even understand, like, any. Like, he's not trying to get under the ball or like. It's weird. It's really weird.

[Sean Pendergast]

He. I saw a video. I saw that video and I don't know if. Because the coat. You know, sometimes videos pop up and so then videos from a few years ago pop up that are in sort of the same category. Yeah, but CM Punk, who's another very famous WWE wrestler, I think he's the champ right now. Now, there was a video that popped up of him shooting baskets that bad.

[Seth Payne]

Horrible.

[Sean Pendergast]

These guys.

[Cole Thompson]

50 Cent, bad first pitch.

[Sean Pendergast]

If. Yes, it's. It's bad. Yeah, it's. It's bad. Like these. These wrestlers, man, you just got to stay in your lane.

[Seth Payne]

The first pitch, I never get, like, I. Because a lot of people can definitely throw a baseball, have had some bad first pitches. It's the, like, all of the. The circumstances and then overthinking it especially. I could totally see me being like, overthinking it and going out and try to the first, and I'd end up holding on to it too long or letting go of it too early.

[Sean Pendergast]

Would you.

[Seth Payne]

This, this Cody Rhodes thing, I. If you guys haven't seen it, I. It's odd. Like, a couple of the kicks.

[Sean Pendergast]

He's.

[Seth Payne]

It's almost like he's trying to put topspin on right? Just skipping along the ground. It's like it doesn't seem possible to be this bad.

[Sean Pendergast]

You're waiting. You're waiting for somebody to point out to him that there are uprights. Like, no, that's what you're. You're aiming to put it through those right there.

[Cole Thompson]

This isn't soccer, but I know cup's going on.

[Sean Pendergast]

You're not trying to get it, like, closest to the pin or something like that.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, I feel like a lot of really, really unathletic people would be able to do it better than that. Elevate the ball just because if they've ever messed around in the backyard, you know, kicking, kicking footballs.

[Cole Thompson]

How many times do you see the drunk 18 year old sign up to go ahead and place $150,000 on the line? They get it off the ground.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

All right. The bad look for pro wrestling, it

[Sean Pendergast]

is between that and the CM Punk shooting baskets thing, it's a. It's not a good day for me, man. All right, now, one athlete that we do love is Jameis Winston. And my new thing is athletes talking about their finances. Most of these videos have gotten me, got me upset. Jameis Winston is the complete opposite of this. The first big splurge for Jameis Winston. We've got that for you coming up next. Hey there. I'm Kendra Adachi, and my show, the Lazy Genius podcast helps you be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't, and you get to decide what matters. I'm not here to tell you what to do.

[Seth Payne]

I'm here to give you a new way to see.

[Sean Pendergast]

Episodes of the Lazy Genius podcast are full of compassionate time management tips and permission slips to do what makes sense for you. New episodes drop every Monday. Follow and listen to the Lazy Genius

[Seth Payne]

podcast on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Sean Pendergast]

All right, so the. We know how the timelines on Twitter work. You know, you click on a few things, and all of a sudden the algorithm is thinking, oh, this guy likes this stuff. So it feeds it to you. It feeds various topics. And so, you know, you know, I get plenty of Sopranos in WWE and Texans and things like that. I've clicked on a few of those athletes lecturing us on how little money $200 million is. And I'm still getting videos that fit underneath that umbrella sent to me.

[Seth Payne]

A lot of people. Yeah, ever since they started doing income tax over a century ago, a lot of People just don't realize that it exists.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

So without professional athletes telling us about income tax, we'd have no way of knowing that you could actually lose. You know, that's the worst part about it, Sean. It does. When you hear somebody talking about that, it is. It's almost as like they're explaining to people, hey, listen, $100 million, you know, you don't just get to keep all of that.

[Sean Pendergast]

Right.

[Seth Payne]

Oh, don't say. Is that what this whole FICO thing is? Okay. All right, so the.

[Sean Pendergast]

The theme of these video. Right, right. So the theme of these videos has always has seemingly, the ones that get sent to me have been, this is how little money all these tens of millions, sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars are.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

So I was pleasantly surprised when I got a video fed to me yesterday of Jameis Winston having a conversation about how much money it felt like he got with his first signing bonus check hitting his bank account.

[Seth Payne]

What did you spend Your first check, man? My first. I didn't touch my first. You know, the. The first few years, I got a lot. Lot of endorsement money. You remember how much it was? My first. Yeah. From the league. I. I don't. I don't remember specifically how much it was, but I do remember I'm a numbers guy.

[Cole Thompson]

I know.

[Seth Payne]

You know, you got in the bank. I do not remember the first. The first time that I looked at my. My account, the first number that I. That I saw. I don't remember what my check was. Yeah, it was $13.4 million. I just saw eight figures in my bank account. Yeah, that's like. That's the first time that I saw, like that. When I saw that, I was like, yeah, yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

See, now it's. I like an athlete that looks at that dollar amount and say this. That's a lot of money.

[Seth Payne]

It was. I, for one. I wonder if they, under withheld because the Signing bonus was 16.7 million, Have to pay taxes the next year. I don't know how it works at that level. Yeah. You know what, though? Okay, so immediately, though, then what I worry about with some guys is it is awesome when guys just like. Okay. They don't even act like they've got more money or. Or anything, but you do have to keep an eye on it.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yes.

[Seth Payne]

You know, if you don't know exactly how much you have, there's plenty of plenty people that are trying to figure out. Once they. Once they realize that you're not paying any attention at all to the money, then they're gonna figure out A way to get it away from you.

[Sean Pendergast]

That's.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, that is. That's. That's pretty.

[Sean Pendergast]

That's wholesome.

[Seth Payne]

I wonder if he was afraid to look at his account the first time. Like, just because it was gonna be such a mind blowing amount.

[Sean Pendergast]

I don't know.

[Cole Thompson]

I still to this day get afraid to look at my account. Account.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. For different reasons.

[Cole Thompson]

I was like, for completely different reasons.

[Sean Pendergast]

But, you know, you're young, excited. Like, I get a few hundred bucks a week from the Houston Press automatically deposited into my account.

[Cole Thompson]

So you get excited by it.

[Sean Pendergast]

I get excited by it. I'm like, ooh, I want to know

[Cole Thompson]

what my wife spent money on. I was like, yeah, let's not open this.

[Sean Pendergast]

Do you have a joint. You and your wife on a joint checking account?

[Cole Thompson]

Yes.

[Sean Pendergast]

Okay. And Seth, you and Brandy, I'm sure. On a joint checking account.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. But only because she thinks that I know how to manage things.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, exactly.

[Seth Payne]

I don't.

[Cole Thompson]

Just a wonderful thing that they trust us. You need to keep.

[Sean Pendergast]

Keep your eye on your checking account.

[Seth Payne]

I know. I need. I want Brandy to.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Because she's smarter than me. She's just. I don't know if she's lazy or what.

[Sean Pendergast]

All right, this was. This was J. And by the way. And Dominican sue is who's interviewing Jameis here. Just to. For clarity's sake. His. I love this story. His first big splurge wasn't a house. It wasn't Bentley's. For his whole family stories we've all heard in these videos I've talked about, his first big splurge was a recliner.

[Seth Payne]

My biggest purchase, I bought, like a fancy chair. Like a little lazy board chair for my dad, mom, my grandma Winston. Okay. And it was. I remember the tag. The tag on that was like. It was like four, six hundred dollars. Yeah. And it was one of the tears, like, you know what I'm saying? With the little compartments on your legs where you can lean back, get the massage of your legs. The back get massage. Like, she was a diabetic, so she was in heavy heaven. Yeah.

[Cole Thompson]

And, like.

[Seth Payne]

And just to see that smile on her face and see how it actually helped her with her daily life, bro. She was a nurse clerk for years at UAP Medical West. And for her to come home, because she. At that time, she wasn't retired yet. For her to come home and sit in her chair and get that, have a vibrator. You know, when you growing up, the only time you see a vibrating chair is in the mall. Yeah. You know What I'm saying, I met the apple.

[Cole Thompson]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

50 cents, you know, and I got my grandma that beside share.

[Cole Thompson]

Okay.

[Seth Payne]

So that's my claim to fame. And it was just 4, 600.

[Sean Pendergast]

I just love Jamis, man. 4,600 on the vibrating recliner.

[Seth Payne]

It's a thoughtful gift too. You know, it's not just throwing a bunch of water. The biggest thing I like and I used to sell rookies this all the time. You know, if I could get to them before they had bought a house already. It's that like they just like for one. Yeah. Just in general, guys just don't really understand. Exactly. They don't. They. They. A lot of those videos that you get upset at, Sean, it is true. Like, a lot of. A lot of times they're having a conversation where it's almost like this is what they would be explaining to a rookie.

[Sean Pendergast]

Sure.

[Seth Payne]

Is that there's no autumn. There is no amount of money that isn't easily blown. Like it just. And people don't want to believe that or anything. It's just. It goes really, really fast. And that's why you see so many stories about not just athletes, but other rich people that somehow end up destitute. There is no amount of money, money that you can't really easily like Brewster's Million was such a stupid movie just because it's easy to spend that much money.

[Sean Pendergast]

Oh, yeah.

[Seth Payne]

The. So the. But the biggest thing that favorite take

[Sean Pendergast]

of the week is this is why Brewster's Millions was a stupid movie.

[Seth Payne]

I'll be the brave soul that says,

[Sean Pendergast]

I'm gonna die on this hill.

[Cole Thompson]

There's so many things in life, but

[Sean Pendergast]

this is the one that I want to go down.

[Seth Payne]

No, but honestly. Honestly. So the biggest thing that you'd have to explain to rookies sometimes is like, listen, you gotta look, I know you. I'm gonna tell you this, and I know you're not gonna believe me, but like these big houses, yes. You can afford it. There's gonna come a time if you buy it. You buy a 5,000 square foot house for your mom.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

There's gonna come a time when you're gonna be on a fixed income. Hopefully it's a really big fixed income.

[Sean Pendergast]

Sure.

[Seth Payne]

But the amount of maintenance and property taxes, not to mention decorating the house. House, everything else that goes into that is something that your mom probably doesn't want. Right.

[Cole Thompson]

Right.

[Seth Payne]

And that you don't want to be in a position where all of a sudden you're like, well, all right, I get. I blew my knee out in my third year. And it turns out the. What it takes to cover all of these expenses. Like, yeah, we could afford it at the time and everything. But it's. It's the. The math is different. Yep. Not to mention just.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

A lot of older people especially, like, they don't want the hassle of a gigantic house. So that. But that just every year would be. It's like some guy would buy a house, and all of a sudden he comes in, he's like, hey, this person's trying to charge me $30,000 for draperies and for Venetian blinds and everything. He's like, is that right? Yeah, that's it. You signed on for a lot more than just the house.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, man, you're gonna have a lot of light coming into that house if you don't get those blinds on there. The thing I liked about Jamis, and I didn't notice this the first time I. I listened to this, probably because I was watching it and not just listening intently like the audio is Jameis pretty good. Furniture salesman. Like, Mattress Mac should bring in James. Like, if Mattress Mac brought it. Mattress Mac on there talking his recliners, you know, because that. His latest ads. He's sitting in the recliners. If he had Jameis next to him, like, describing it.

[Seth Payne]

And it was one of materials, like, you know what I'm saying, with the little compartments on your legs where you can lean back, get the massage of your legs. The back get massage. Imagine Mattress Mac and Jamis trying to out ham each other. Oh, my gosh.

[Sean Pendergast]

It would be 30 seconds. Could not contain it.

[Seth Payne]

That could actually be a really, really good. That's a great idea.

[Cole Thompson]

Do you just sign him to the Texan so he can do.

[Sean Pendergast]

Just to do. Just to do heb. Commercials in gallery furniture commercials with Mattress Mac, which.

[Seth Payne]

Imagine Jamis, if, for one, he probably wouldn't have gotten to that little picture pickle that he didn't call. Well, actually, he got into other pickles too. But as far as. As far as the crab legs. One, if he had had, like, like, he would be the nil. Like, usually it's all bogus that people are spending it for endorsement money or anything because. But with Jamis, you'd actually be getting the bang for the buck on that.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yes.

[Seth Payne]

Like, you'd actually get. You're spending money on him and he's doing a commercial for your car. You're for your. Like, you'd be really good in the nil.

[Sean Pendergast]

He'd be amazing. He'd be amazing. He'd Be amazing on the. He would do. Do I. If Jameis were here, he would do an H E B commercial involving crab legs.

[Cole Thompson]

You would have to.

[Sean Pendergast]

He. He's done what he did.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, he's done a bunch of. He does not shy away from the.

[Sean Pendergast]

No, he's not. Like. There's this restaurant. I think it's Jimmy's famous seafood up in Baltimore. It's some seafood restaurant where he did commercials for their. They'll ship the crab legs to you.

[Cole Thompson]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

And he did commercials for them. Yeah, he loves that.

[Seth Payne]

All right. The crabs just walk there themselves.

[Sean Pendergast]

Literally.

[Seth Payne]

Crab. The crab legs. Legs, you know, True.

[Sean Pendergast]

They still have legs.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

No feelings, but legs.

[Cole Thompson]

All right.

[Sean Pendergast]

Pain and pender gas.

[Seth Payne]

The whole thing with the crab legs, though, too. And again, yeah. Jameis had some other issues along the way before he stopped drinking alcohol. But the crowd. Did it not turn out that basically I believe his story, or at least I did at the time that the manager had told him, go ahead and take those.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, I believe it.

[Seth Payne]

And he did. And yes. Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Even with all the other peccadillos Jameis had going on at the time that were not great. I. I do. I do believe that's especially.

[Seth Payne]

Got railroaded on that.

[Sean Pendergast]

No, no. Especially like in a small college town, you know, that's. Yeah, I could. The quarterback of the team walks into the publix right there. All right, Painting Pendergast with you. Cole Thompson in with us heading into the 8 o' clock hour. All right, we are back at a square with Lebron James that we've been at multiple times before. And I was listening in on Cleveland today. They're being held Hostage again by LeBron on a Houston angle to this. Have we ever felt this way about any athlete, any free agent recently that we can think of in Houston Sports. We will discuss that coming up next. I'm Anna Garcia, host of True Crime News, the podcast. Every week we bring you in depth

[Cole Thompson]

coverage on cases making headlines as well as those that go under the radar.

[Sean Pendergast]

Tune in for murders that defy explanation, mystery seeking exploration, and shocking secrets that

[Seth Payne]

will leave you breathless.

[Sean Pendergast]

Each week we honor the victims by going beyond the salacious in our search for justice.

[Cole Thompson]

Crime never stops. And neither do we. Listen to True Crime News, available now on the Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Sean Pendergast]

So we've got. We've got fanatics fest going on right now as Cole Thompson in studio with Seth and I today and on Monday, as you pointed out earlier, Cole, you. You talked about the video of Cody

[Seth Payne]

Rhodes Making that a Fanatics Fest.

[Sean Pendergast]

That was a Fanatics Fest. Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

So if.

[Sean Pendergast]

I think this is the second one.

[Seth Payne]

I think.

[Sean Pendergast]

I think the first one was last year. And the Houston tie to the first one was that the Kevin Durant trade literally came down while Kevin Durant was on stage, stage with them at Fanatics Fest doing an interview.

[Cole Thompson]

Didn't somebody ask him a question? He couldn't respond because of it hadn't gone official for the new league.

[Sean Pendergast]

I think that's what it was. Yeah, I think that's what it was. So. And then they. It was like a stand up interview he did and then he did a sit down interview on the stage up there. And I think he started talking a little more openly about it because it had been reported by that at that point that the trade was going down.

[Seth Payne]

The first One was in 2024, which was notable because C.J. stroud was involved in it. Oh, we got a lot of CJ Stroud content.

[Sean Pendergast]

So we're on number three.

[Cole Thompson]

Three.

[Sean Pendergast]

And the content is the thing like when I, when I saw the dates, I'm like, oh, we. We've gotten some good stuff from Fanatics Fest. Yeah, we haven't really gotten anything like earth shaking yet. The big thing that was being anticipated yesterday was LeBron James did a sit down, I think with Tyrese Halliburton. I think he was sitting down with. I knew it was somebody from the Pacers. And I think a lot of folks, especially in cities that are anticipating LeBron James possibly being on their team, which I think is kind of whittled down to Cleveland. We know he's not going back to the Lakers. Cleveland, Golden State, Miami and Philly feel like the four leaders in the clubhouse. You would say Philly, Philly, six to one.

[Cole Thompson]

Okay.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. They're so. They're on the fringe. I'm just looking at the odds. And I listen. Seth knows this. I listen. I like the guys in Cleveland on our sister station up there.

[Seth Payne]

They're always so miserable about something.

[Sean Pendergast]

It's a fun listen.

[Seth Payne]

We got to listen. We got to listen to them talk themselves into James Harden being a clutch playoff.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, yeah. And we played it on the year.

[Seth Payne]

This is the year he's gonna. He's gonna Clayton Kershaw it all around.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, I saw. I've not pulled any audio from those two guys. Yeah. Yes. Ken Carman and Anthony Lim are the two guys I'm talking about. They do a great job. But I was listening in on them on the way in this morning and right now the big Story up there is, when is LeBron James going to make his decision? Which is something they've been through multiple times now up in Cleveland. And it's funny to listen, particularly Ken is just like, wake me up when he makes this decision. We've been through this too many times before of him leaving us on pins and, yeah, needles. And the three previous times. It's only worked out for us once, and that was back in 2014. So they're kind of being held hostage, and to a degree, basketball is being held hostage by LeBron right now because Adam Silver said this yesterday also that he would like LeBron to make his decision because we got a schedule that we need to make. You know, they. They got to make their Christmas schedule because LeBron is for sure going to play on Christmas. You know, they. We need to know who he's going to play for so we know how to sequence and stack some of the national games and things like that. So it. I find it fascinating. We'll get to the Houston angle on this in a second. But I find this fascinating that at age, what, 41, 42 now, LeBron's still capable of holding the league hostage.

[Seth Payne]

But it's also fascinating because if you made the equivalent, like, okay, he's. He's also being treated as if, like, he's the mediocre quarterback who needs circumstances to be just right. So, like. Like, you know that, yeah, you can win a championship with him, but guys, circumstances got to be just right.

[Sean Pendergast]

He's at that stage.

[Seth Payne]

He's not quite the gu he used to be.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, he is at that stage now. He is marquee value, though, man. He is marquee value. So I just. In listening in on Cleveland, I'm like, ah, these poor bastards got to go through this with LeBron again. And I got to thinking about it as I'm driving in. I'm like, when were the times, Seth? When were the. When is the biggest time you can think of when you. Since you and I have been doing this show together? Or maybe even before. Maybe.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, before it was. Chris Bosch is the one. I'm. Put Chris Bosch in there, because that was the one where we were really. I mean, look, the Astros went away and traded away what's his face there?

[Sean Pendergast]

The Rockets. Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

What did I say? The Astros. Yeah, okay. Sorry. And, like, it was all set up to be, like, the perfect landing spot for Chris Bosh. And then Chris Bosh did, annoyingly, what every fan would hope for is he decided to stay. He decided to stay home in Miami like, and I. Because Meltzer shut me down hardcore on that one, because I. I was lambasing for Chris Bosh for not wanting it. Not wanting it enough that if you wanted another championship, he could come to Houston. Instead, he's saying he's going to be with those laggards in Miami. Did I say LeBron Bosh?

[Sean Pendergast]

No, no, no, no, no, no.

[Seth Payne]

That was after. That was after LeBron.

[Sean Pendergast]

LeBron left. That same.

[Seth Payne]

No, that was.

[Sean Pendergast]

It was.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. Everything had been dismantled. And so I was saying, look, if you want to. If you really want it, come to Houston. And Mike made the very good point. It's like, hey, don't we as sports fans want our guys to stick around. Around and be committed and be loyal?

[Sean Pendergast]

And you said, stop making such good points.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, I said, go to law school, nerd. Yeah, did.

[Sean Pendergast]

Bosh is a good one. I guess. To me, just thinking recently here, I. To me, the reason I love this topic about LeBron in cities and cities being held hostage or the emotions being toyed with with fans, you know, kind of having them on a string ring, is that I think of the Astros in the Jim Crane era, and I had a hard time thinking, now, you brought this up during the break set, that maybe, you know, maybe Bregman. When they kind of came in, they swooped in at the last second with a. With an offer for Bregman that was competitive.

[Seth Payne]

And I would say there was a certain portion of the fan base on pins and needles that really wanted him back. I was. A lot of people did, actually. I felt like I was in the minute minority for saying, like, no, we're not. We're not just gonna kowtow to your every little wish and win.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's. He's. You got good memories of Alex Bregman, so it's. So I. So I guess Bregman kind of fits that to me. Like, the signature of the Jim Crane era, though, is that we really didn't go through a lot of that because none of us really felt like any of these guys were coming back. Yeah, you know, Garrett. Garrett Cole leaves that. That one's a little different. Just because I feel like a lot of people were like, yeah, get the hell out of here with your Scott Boris.

[Cole Thompson]

Remember what happened in 2019. I'll represent myself.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, but, but, but. But I. But if they had resigned, it might have been cool with it. Garrett Cole, George Springer, I don't think they made offers to all these guys, but I think the fan base, by and large, in these instances, you know, Carlos Correa after the 2021 season, the biggest one for me of that era is probably Justin Verlander 2022. Because I think the Astros would love to have brought Verlander back. And I think they were in my hunches is from everything I've heard is that they were competitive with what the Mets offered Verlander. And I remember being disappointed. I remember feel. I remember at least feeling with like, with Verlander after the World Series in 2022 when he went to the Mets, that the Astros had more than a puncher's chance to keep him, in part because Justin Verlander feels like he's in that Jose Altuve category where Jim Crane. Well, I think we saw that when they traded for him. Like, Jim Crane will take. Do whatever is reasonable to try to still have Justin Verlander as long as he's still pitching at a high level on his baseball team.

[Seth Payne]

The. The Jose Abreu. It's funny, in my mind, I. I wanted to check the date on Jose Abreu and when he left in 2005.

[Sean Pendergast]

Charles Beltron.

[Seth Payne]

Oh, my gosh. What did I say? I was okay with him leaving. I was okay with him leaving Carlos Beltran. When he left, it ended up being. It was January 9th.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

In my mind, it was like that he. That he held on until like, February or March.

[Sean Pendergast]

That was a long time back then, though. It was.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. The hot stove league was actually a hot stove.

[Sean Pendergast]

Different. Yeah. Yeah. The free agency was a lot more like. Like football back then. So that. That. That probably did feel like a long time and.

[Seth Payne]

And back. And the Astros made a really respectable offer to Carlos Beltran back then. They offered him a record deal, and he just.

[Sean Pendergast]

No.

[Cole Thompson]

Yep.

[Seth Payne]

See you later.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yep.

[Cole Thompson]

Could I present one to you? Because he wasn't technically a free agent, but there was a lot of conversation with him.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Cole Thompson]

Jadavian Clowney. Because they franchise tagged him.

[Seth Payne]

Oh. Oh, yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. That's a good one.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. Ryan tried to dupe him into a trade to the Dolphins. Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Reset that, Seth. For those who don't know the o' Brien thing, Clowny.

[Seth Payne]

Clowny very adroitly understood that. Look, once he signed that franchise tag, he didn't have any leverage at all. And o' Brien was saying, hey, listen, we can't do anything until he comes in and signs his franchise tag. And it would turn out later we would find that they had a deal all ready to go to send him to the Miami Dolphins. And it would have been like it would have been like Clowney walking and walking in, signing the franchise tag, and then three goons come in and kidnap him and take him off to Miami.

[Cole Thompson]

Yeah, him. They put him in the room.

[Seth Payne]

Clowney ended up being like understanding his leverage and what he, what he was going to do with it. And that was like. That was yet another one of these trades that on the surface of it. Yeah, look, you can say the Clowney trade made sense if you look at it from a certain angle. The Hopkins trade, I could make an argument for that. It was the sum total of all those things. Like you had to bend over backwards for all those guys to figure out. Like, just. No, you're not going to consistently make these weird deals and have it work out for you.

[Sean Pendergast]

Well, the big thing about it was that with o' Brien was that in the deals where they were getting draft picks, he. He completely undershot on those. And on the deals where they're trading picks out. Yeah, Tunsil being the most notable, but a third round pick for Gary and Conley, like a third round pick for Duke Johnson, like, he had no problem scratching out these massive draft choice checks to get guys in the building. And then he'd send guys out of the building and he'd get next to each. They'd be a thrift store prices.

[Seth Payne]

Well, remember, the big story with. With Clowney was that like, you trade him away and people forget because Clowney wasn't like. Because he didn't end up doing all that electrifyingly great afterwards. Everything people thought, oh, that was a good deal. No, Clowny was coming off of a really good year. But the big thing was nobody knew that he was even a potential trade piece.

[Sean Pendergast]

Right.

[Seth Payne]

That was the year the Chiefs had traded Frank Clark. Frank Clark for a pretty healthy sum.

[Cole Thompson]

And someone else, wasn't it.

[Seth Payne]

The Chiefs said afterwards that they didn't even know that Clowney was an option.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

You know, like, so they waited and dragged it out. They kind of pulled the Jerry Jones.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

And they got a future draft pick. And it was just. Yeah, it was a. It was. Every deal was just a little lopsided in the wrong direction.

[Sean Pendergast]

This is one that I put in the rundown guys that. That a listener points out says in a different way. We were held hostage for a period of time.

[Seth Payne]

Time.

[Sean Pendergast]

By Deshaun Watson, because you could. I'm guessing that that's all the text.

[Seth Payne]

Kidnapping was never an allegation. He did not kidnap anybody that we know of. No, no.

[Sean Pendergast]

There are other things. Yeah, but. No, no kidnapping. But But DeShawn was. I mean, obviously the legal issue, yet you had to get.

[Cole Thompson]

Really.

[Sean Pendergast]

As we learned, the only thing you needed to get resolved was whether or not there were going to be criminal charges. Because Cleveland and three other teams had no problem. Problem offering trades for a guy with 24 civil lawsuits. I would say this is the reason I put Watson in the rundown for this wasn't because of being held hostage for that one weird season where he was inactive every week. It was the anticipation of who's he going to get traded to? What are we going to get for him? I can't. We. Seth, you and I had countless hypotheticals.

[Seth Payne]

Oh, yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Once the criminal charges were or once the. Once he was absolved of doing anything criminal and we knew who the teams were. Countless hypotheticals of this player, that player, and these three first round picks. That kind of.

[Seth Payne]

Oh, no. Yeah. It got to the point where like. And when people got some distance to it, they realized, okay, that was a real haul. But so many people had speculated that they might get five first round picks for desean Watson or something really absurd. Yeah, that, like, in the moment, people. Some people thought it was a great deal for the Texans, like, with time. Yeah. Pretty much unanimously. People said, okay, okay, that's. That is a really, really good haul. Especially when desean Watson ended up being

[Sean Pendergast]

a horrible quarterback and one of those picks turned into Will Anderson Jr. Yep. You know, like, it's. I mean, the Texas, you know.

[Seth Payne]

No. But. Yeah. That whole. No talking about being on pins and needles, though, that entire season. Yeah. I felt like I was very open about it at the time, and I still am. I would have. I would have dealt him off for so much less than they would would have gotten for him. Just because of the stress level and the weirdness and everything. Yep. It was strange, man.

[Cole Thompson]

Yep.

[Seth Payne]

Him being out there wearing a penny is a scout team. Defensive back in training camp was one of the weirdest things I've ever seen at a football.

[Sean Pendergast]

That was the. That was the. Okay. We are so far down this rabbit hole now. Like we are to, you know, like we're. We're in a really weird place. When I saw him in that shower

[Seth Payne]

cap in training camp where they would film him every day coming out at practice.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

And it was the same thing every day.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

And then the one day he said, why are y' all filming? It's the same thing every day. He got his answer immediately because that went viral. That was like, this is why we're filming. For the moment you ask, why are we doing this? Yes.

[Sean Pendergast]

You want the answer to your question, hit Twitter right now. Yeah.

[Cole Thompson]

Go see the retweets. I promise you, you're gonna find out.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yep.

[Seth Payne]

Yep.

[Sean Pendergast]

All right, Pain and pender gas with you. Cole Thompson in studio with us here today. All right, coming, by the way, the favorite for LeBron, just to put to close the book on LeBron. And. And I don't know when this announcement's going to come from LeBron. They were hoping for it yesterday at Fanatics Fest. Cleveland is even money right now. Warriors 3 to 1, Heat 4 to 1, Sixers 6 to 1. If you're wondering where the Rockets are on the list, Rockets are in a group that includes the Milwaukee Bucks, the Washington Wizards, the Detroit Pistons, the Thunder, the Raptors, and the Suns. At 100 to 1, I feel good about our chances. I say you're saying there's a chance.

[Seth Payne]

Oh, yeah. But by the way, Sean, Yeah, The CJ did a bunch of stuff with Michael Rubin and Fanatics, but not the inaugural fan.

[Sean Pendergast]

I think that.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, I thought the inaugural was in 2024, but it was in August.

[Sean Pendergast]

Okay, gotcha, Gotcha.

[Seth Payne]

But remember, that's where he had been doing, like, the. The Whites party and everything. First off season for him. That was all that Michael Rubin stuff.

[Sean Pendergast]

Gotcha. Gotcha. All right, Pain and pender gas with you. All right, coming up next, proof that even the most famous athletes are not as famous as we might think. Think. And also, Seth and Luke Morrow did an exercise earlier this week, one of the days that I was out, that I am taking great offense to the. To the data in this particular study that was done here.

[Seth Payne]

It's not a good look for you.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, it's a bad look for me, and I don't like bad looks for me. We'll do that coming up next. Hey, y'.

[Seth Payne]

All.

[Sean Pendergast]

I'm Maddie. And I'm Poodle.

[Seth Payne]

And together we host the podcast Reality Gays.

[Cole Thompson]

We are two. Two ridiculous homosexuals who love nothing more than talking about reality television and tearing in a new one.

[Sean Pendergast]

So whether it's 90 day fiance love is blind love after lockup, or any

[Seth Payne]

other trash TV show about lonely hearts looking for love. Your gay bestie's got you covered, y'.

[Cole Thompson]

All. New shows every week. Follow and listen to Reality Gays wherever

[Seth Payne]

you get your podcast.

[Sean Pendergast]

Reality Gays, let's love. All right, Pain and Pender gassed. Next segment, we'll do Astros trade deadline needs ranked, but we're going to rank it. Cole's going to lead us on this exercise. Cole Thompson in studio with Seth and I. We're going to rank it, but we're going to do it the way that those funny viral videos. Not viral, but those viral videos where people have to give the ranking to the thing like where it is and

[Cole Thompson]

then you don't want to.

[Seth Payne]

Blind ranking.

[Sean Pendergast]

Blind ranking, yeah. So we're going to do blind Astros trade deadline needs ranked. We'll do that in the next segment. This is one more cut from the SBS here from earlier tonight. This was really funny. I can't believe I missed this when I watched the other night. Mike Tyson was one of a handful. It was Mike Tyson, Jake Paul and one other person.

[Cole Thompson]

He was a fighter, wasn't he?

[Sean Pendergast]

I. Yeah, I can't. He's much shorter than the two of them. Mike Tyson, they were giving out the award to best single game performance to one of four athletes and one of them was Shohei Ohtani, who ended up being the one winner. Take a listen to Mike Tyson announcing the winner. But listen very closely after Jake Paul gets done talking, that Shohei Ohtani, he couldn't be here. Keep in mind, he. He couldn't be here tonight to accept this award.

[Seth Payne]

And he. And SB award goes to.

[Sean Pendergast]

Check this out.

[Seth Payne]

Shani.

[Sean Pendergast]

Sh could not be here tonight. He sends his gratitude and appreciation to ESPN and everyone who voted for him. Hear that at the end.

[Seth Payne]

I. It's. Look, I know sometimes we don't realize when we're heavily in the sports world all the time that a lot of people just don't pay attention to it, but I feel like v. Excuse. I feel like Mike Tyson. Tyson is. He would have. He would have at least been in some rooms where people are having conversations at some point about Shohei.

[Sean Pendergast]

Oh, I feel like he probably has a house in la. Mike Tyson, right?

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Just in passing a billboard or something would have looked up and seen Shohei Otani.

[Seth Payne]

That's a. That's. That's pretty. That's honestly pretty amazing that he doesn't know who show. Do you guys notice too, that he has a lisp?

[Sean Pendergast]

He's got kind of a pitchy. He's got kind of a pitchy voice, too.

[Seth Payne]

He's got about a higher voice than you expect, too.

[Sean Pendergast]

He doesn't look like his voice.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Shohei Ohtani. Yeah. If I had never heard Shohei Ohtani before, I guess it does sound like. Kind of like a woman. Yeah.

[Cole Thompson]

You know, we'll try saying it with the lisp. So. Hey, how's that sound?

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, so the, the. The amazing thing is he didn't know who he was, but he pronounced his name flawlessly.

[Seth Payne]

Right, Right.

[Sean Pendergast]

He got there.

[Seth Payne]

I wonder if somebody, you know, when you do that beforehand, he might have gone through somebody with how to pronounce the names. I wonder if somebody said something that made him think that, because it's also. You hear it, a Japanese name. Yeah. Like, I. Maybe it sounds like a female name, but I wouldn't know one way or the other. I bet whoever was prepping him and teaching him how to pronounce the names said something that made him think that, like, he misheard it or something. He thought it was a woman.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. Yeah. Good job, Mike Tyson.

[Cole Thompson]

You don't think it's a troll job at all, do you? Like, did not know who?

[Sean Pendergast]

No, I think. No, I. 1000% think Mike Tyson, because it was. You could tell by the sound level on him saying that he was saying it to him as they were kind of walking off stage.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. He didn't think he was gonna get picked up on the mic.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, it's a hot mic. Yeah. Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

So that's great. What could somebody have said about Shohei Ohtani that he might have thought that it was a woman or something if he didn't hear the he. If he thought he heard somebody say she, and it was like, she just says she does so much.

[Sean Pendergast]

Oh, you know what?

[Seth Payne]

She can do everything.

[Sean Pendergast]

He caught wind of the story of a man willing to. To go to prison for Shohei.

[Seth Payne]

That's right.

[Sean Pendergast]

Translators. Yeah. He must be a piece of ass, man, because that guy went to prison for her. Yeah, Yeah. I think he's in prison, the translator. Is he okay? Yeah. Boy, that was a story for a while. That was.

[Cole Thompson]

We can double down and see if he is.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. As far as we know. Okay. So this. This. This most attractive and least attractive hobbies thing that you and Luke did the other day.

[Seth Payne]

It's a Reddit thread, subreddit, Interesting AI. And it's got a lot of interesting stuff on there.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yes.

[Seth Payne]

But one of them is this poll. It was a survey they did where they had women rank the most attractive hobbies a man can have and the least attractive hobbies a man can have.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yes.

[Seth Payne]

And a lot of it pretty much tracks, but some of it I was a little bit alarmed by and concerned maybe for Amy's sake, because, Sean, you check a lot of these boxes off on least attractive hobbies.

[Sean Pendergast]

I do, I do. I. I look. My reaction, looking at this, it's a miracle I've ever been with a woman.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Looking at this.

[Seth Payne]

Okay. The one thing I'll say right off at the onset is it was weird because there's some of these hobbies that you and I didn't even know what they were. But video games isn't on here as a hobby. I think it's like probably safe to say that video games, along with anime and comic books and stuff, these were all some of the least popular ones. I'm guessing video games games are less popular with women than the popular. I would too.

[Sean Pendergast]

I'm a little surprised they. That they weren't on there. Also, the ones that I looked at and said, oh, okay. I mean, second to last on the list of like, least desirable. Least desirable is Manosphere. I don't know what that is. What is.

[Seth Payne]

That's like, I think just pretty much that whole, like alpha male women are. Don't trust women, like all that type of stuff like that male empowerment movement.

[Cole Thompson]

Manosphere is the collection of online communities and media that focuses on men's issues, often promoting anti feminist views.

[Sean Pendergast]

Okay, well, that definitely doesn't fit me. That's. That, that's not me now. Second to last at 6. So manosphere is at 3.1%. Very low. Gambling, 6.4%. I don't know, man. I see a lot of women in casinos.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. What are they doing?

[Sean Pendergast]

It's a good follow up.

[Seth Payne]

Smoking their third pack of cigarettes. Prop up there. Yeah. Scooting around on their little scooters.

[Sean Pendergast]

So as I count from the bottom here, which ones am I guilty of?

[Seth Payne]

All right, it's a Manosphere. Gambling. Gambling. You're guilty of gambling.

[Sean Pendergast]

I'm guilty of. Porn is next.

[Seth Payne]

Okay, so this is interesting because, like, okay, there's porn, which I think, you know, given statistics and everything, like it's. That's most young men these days.

[Cole Thompson]

Sure.

[Seth Payne]

Or most things men. But if you, if you're engaging. Important enough to call it a hobby. Yeah. It's not addiction.

[Sean Pendergast]

I'm not anti porn.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, that's okay. Yeah, there's no. I feel like there's no in between. You go straight from whatever level of use it is, straight to addiction. If you're calling it a hobby, that's kind of an addiction.

[Sean Pendergast]

Well, here's how you call it a hobby. Hobby means you're on the other side of the camera. No, hobby means you're not watch it on the laptop. Hobby means people are watching you.

[Seth Payne]

No. You know what hobby is that? Hey, next weekend I'm taking a trip to go to this convention where I can get autographs and stuff like that. So, like, if you're like. Yeah, if you're. If you're taking a weekend off to go get a picture taken with Lisa Ann, I'd say that's a hobby.

[Sean Pendergast]

If I were to look at the nominees. Okay, so how do you know that porn is a hobby as opposed to something you just dabble in? If I look at the nominees for the AVN Awards and I know who all of them are.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Then it's a hobby.

[Cole Thompson]

That might be a hobby.

[Sean Pendergast]

Then it qualifies as a hobby.

[Seth Payne]

You got to tell a woman, listen, it's not a hobby. I'm a connoisseur.

[Sean Pendergast]

I'm what they call an aficionado.

[Cole Thompson]

But don't you find it weird that more women are less attracted to men who are hobby enthusiasts on porn than gambling? Yeah, because it's a 10.8% versus 6.

[Sean Pendergast]

That does surprise me.

[Seth Payne]

One is more financial. You think it's a woman? If you think it's about a potential mate. You know, like you'd like them to be financially responsible.

[Sean Pendergast]

That's true.

[Seth Payne]

Gambling's probably more likely to know.

[Cole Thompson]

If I'm spending money to go to the AVN Awards, I'm not spending my money responsibly.

[Sean Pendergast]

That's true, too. All right, so counting. Counting from the least. So so far, Gambling, yes. Porn. Not anti porn, but not a hobby. Arguing. Okay. Arguing online is the next one.

[Seth Payne]

That's a job requirement.

[Sean Pendergast]

That's true. That's. Anytime Amy gets kind of of like a little testy about the amount of time, she doesn't do it nearly as much, I think, because I've gotten better at this, actually.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

But back when I was first on social media, like on Twitter, like hardcore, she would be like, you're on there all day. And I would be arguing with people on there. I would be debating. You know, Seth, I've stopped by and large looking at my mentions, so that has helped.

[Seth Payne]

You don't get. You don't get roped into arguments. Yeah, that.

[Sean Pendergast]

That's. So that's been dialed back a little bit.

[Seth Payne]

Bit.

[Sean Pendergast]

Next on the list of you're.

[Seth Payne]

But you haven't. You're recovering. Arguing.

[Sean Pendergast]

I could. I could relapse at any moment. Yeah, yeah. What is Funko?

[Seth Payne]

I can tell they're like bobbleheads or something. What are they, Cole?

[Cole Thompson]

So this is actually one of my hobbies.

[Seth Payne]

Oh, you unattractive bastard.

[Sean Pendergast]

Again, I have radio voice. You hideous monster.

[Cole Thompson]

I have just discussed basically what it is. It's like action figures, but they have the Size of a head of like a bobblehead.

[Sean Pendergast]

Oh, I've seen those.

[Cole Thompson]

Yeah. And usually what you do is you keep them in the box and if it's somebody who is very famous, you get it signed. They go for big. Like every single year at the rodeo I make Kirsten stop by the Funko Pop stand and I will buy the ones that are signed and autographed.

[Seth Payne]

Okay, so you just Kirsten glower while you do it.

[Cole Thompson]

Listen, I wear t shirts from 2016 that I had in college still. Because if I don't want to spend money on things that I think are frivolous, this is my way of getting back.

[Sean Pendergast]

You get one splurge.

[Cole Thompson]

I get one splurge.

[Sean Pendergast]

It was a recliner for his grandmother.

[Cole Thompson]

You.

[Sean Pendergast]

It's a bunch of large headed me.

[Cole Thompson]

It's a bunch of. And they have to be certain specific ones. Like I'm not randomly just trying to collect all of like certain. I like certain ones that I'm going to spend. Like I spent. The most I've ever spent on a Funko Pop is $85.

[Seth Payne]

Okay.

[Cole Thompson]

85 bucks.

[Sean Pendergast]

Okay. They're called Funko Pop.

[Seth Payne]

That seems like a healthy. That's a much. You know the whole thing about that is I could see where women might think it's unattractive, but it's so far of the ones we've seen that's the least harmful one. I think you know what makes it

[Cole Thompson]

unattractive is like when you walk into my office at my house and they're just completely staring at you non stop. I think that's what makes it the Funko dolls. They're staring directly at you, Pops. Yeah, I have over. I have over I think 50 or 60 of them at this point.

[Sean Pendergast]

Wow.

[Cole Thompson]

So they're all staring at you in the face and it's like, you know what?

[Sean Pendergast]

I can. A little weird.

[Seth Payne]

A little 40 year old virgin is. Yeah.

[Cole Thompson]

By Steve Keller at this point.

[Seth Payne]

Boys,

[Sean Pendergast]

what's the big news in a

[Seth Payne]

figma

[Cole Thompson]

Pearson, where have you gone? Oh wait. You were always a figment of my imagination.

[Sean Pendergast]

That's right. Okay, next sixth on the least attractive marijuana. I'm not a dope smoker.

[Seth Payne]

Well no, I think that's the thing though too. Like if you're classifying as it a hobby, I think women are probably looking at this and thinking like in their mind they think like classic stoner stereo.

[Sean Pendergast]

Right, right, right.

[Seth Payne]

So it's like it's probably not that a guy smokes pot at all. It's like he's a stoner yeah. You know, like they get the vision of him just being on his couch for 20 hours at a time and all that. But I get that.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. Clubbing is next.

[Seth Payne]

Clubbing. I was surprised that it was as low on the list.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Except that the women who aren't into clubbing are totally just like. Yeah, that's not my life.

[Sean Pendergast]

Right, right, right. I feel like that's your.

[Cole Thompson]

Either.

[Sean Pendergast]

There's no gray area with plus again,

[Seth Payne]

you get a little bit of that cheesy probably in your mind you see clubbing and you're thinking the night at the Roxbury, guys.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yes. Yeah. You get a visual. You get a visual.

[Seth Payne]

Sorry, what are you going to say?

[Cole Thompson]

Call no age demographic. Who are you asking this to?

[Sean Pendergast]

Oh, I don't know. It's a good question.

[Cole Thompson]

It's. The 24 year old is probably like, hell yeah, let's go ahead and do shots at 3 in the morning. The 32 year old is definitely not interested in that type of lifestyle for

[Sean Pendergast]

the sake of time. The two that are left because there's like 10 more.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

The two that are on the remainder of the list that I am, I would say qualify at the very least. Strong interest to definite hobby. Cigars and drinks. Drinking.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, Definitely drinking for you because I consider myself a reader.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

And you spend more time at the bar than I do reading.

[Sean Pendergast]

So that's a.

[Seth Payne]

It's a hobby.

[Sean Pendergast]

Okay. That's a good barometer, actually. Yeah. Yeah. Touch tunes would be my other.

[Seth Payne]

I try to read for at least two hours a day and I feel like you're. You're there.

[Sean Pendergast]

Lightweight. You're a lightweight in my world.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, I know.

[Sean Pendergast]

Hell out of here, man. All right.

[Seth Payne]

By the way, for video games, real quick, the way they only listed the most and least attractive hobbies. So video games are somewhere in the middle, the middle 50th percentile, which is a good sign for gamers out there.

[Sean Pendergast]

I can buy that.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. Women are more open to it than maybe it's perceived.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Cole Thompson]

I've seen way more Twitch streamers that are women in the last like five years.

[Sean Pendergast]

That's what I thought when. When, when we were hashing out video games. Like maybe it's in that in between area.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, that's definitely what it was. I was just being stupid because the

[Sean Pendergast]

lowest percentage of the most attractive hobbies is 87.9% percent. The highest percentage of the least attractive is 33.6. So there's a whole 50 in there. Yeah, yeah.

[Seth Payne]

That's a good. Good for you gamers? Yeah, it's becoming more palatable to women.

[Sean Pendergast]

Good for me. Only like attractive.

[Cole Thompson]

Only like.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, only like five of the 15 least attractive hobbies are on my ticket.

[Seth Payne]

Hide all of these from Amy or do. She just goes.

[Sean Pendergast]

She's into some of them.

[Seth Payne]

That's how it works.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, you gotta find. That's the left guessing. Because then none of them are zero.

[Cole Thompson]

Right.

[Sean Pendergast]

You know, none of them are zero. There are percentages here. Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. The women that are into the manosphere, that's probably. I gotta find these women. That's got to be interesting.

[Sean Pendergast]

I gotta hack, man. I need to workshop that one with Amy and just see if she falls in. I'm not into the manosphere. My wife might be.

[Seth Payne]

Well, the part, the part of the manosphere that people are thinking about is there's like a sect of like, there's this one sliver of like young men that are almost into like painting out like, like, you know, like her vagina will eat you alive. Yeah. Like, it's just kind of a. Like it's got teeth.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Got teeth. That does their evil. These women, it's a creature.

[Sean Pendergast]

All right, coming up next, we mentioned this Astros trade deadline needs ranked, but we are going to rank these blindly. Cole's going to lead us through this segment. Seth and I are going to rank these blindly. Finally, we'll do a little Astros talk. Take a Mania. Top of the hour. That's all coming up next. All right, Sean Pendergast, Seth Payne, Cole Thompson with you on a. On a Friday. We made it to the end of the week. We'll do Take a Mania. I wasn't here for Take a mania last week. Seth Schefter is still holding the strap, eh. For his side.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. And there were some contenders. I couldn't remember why I, I gave. There was a strong contender, but it just didn't quite meet the criteria. Criteria. Part of it was just. I think I just. Chef to, who by the way, just got an 11 year extension at ESPN, is going to continue to do well and make millions saying inane things.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Because agents told them to.

[Sean Pendergast]

We'll see if he can get taken down today. We got a few challengers. We'll do that at the top of the hour. All right, so Cole Thompson's in with us today and back with us on Monday. We. We talked a little Astros today. But the Astros get started back up tonight. Baltimore coming to town for a three game series this weekend. Astros sit three games out in the division game And a half out in the wild card 47 and 51. So clearly the thing that's keeping them in the race right now, there's two things keeping them in the race. Jordan Alvarez and the mediocrity of the American League.

[Cole Thompson]

I said the comedy sour known as the wild card race. The American League.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yes. The swamp of just tears that is the American League. League wild card race. So the Astros have needs. And if they want to make a move here, they've got needs. And we got a trade deadline coming up on August 3rd, which feels weird that the trade deadlines in August, but it's August 3rd, 5 o' clock local time.

[Cole Thompson]

They got an extra 72 hours to go ahead and create rumors that were

[Sean Pendergast]

never gut your farm system for something for.

[Cole Thompson]

For what, three months of a rental. Right. Terry, Skibble time, baby.

[Sean Pendergast]

All right, so Seth and I, you're going to lead us on this exercise here. We're gonna. We are gonna blindly rank rank. How many do we have? Five needs.

[Cole Thompson]

Five needs.

[Sean Pendergast]

Okay. I'm gonna let you go first, Seth.

[Cole Thompson]

So here's how it goes. I'm not going to tell you what the next need is.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yep.

[Cole Thompson]

I could be messing with you.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Cole Thompson]

I could throw randomly in. Oh, shortstop.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Cole Thompson]

And so you got to be able to mindset that I'm gonna be throwing you some curveballs here.

[Sean Pendergast]

Okay.

[Cole Thompson]

Just five random needs. Rank them one to five. We'll go over after every single one.

[Sean Pendergast]

Okay.

[Cole Thompson]

The first need, middle reliever. Doesn't need to be a left hander. Doesn't need to be a right hander.

[Sean Pendergast]

That didn't one ending guy. I remember the open of this show. I remember, remember a long time ago, 2 hours and 46 minutes ago, Seth poo pooed all over bringing in a roulette lefty, reliever, righty.

[Seth Payne]

I didn't poo poo bring one in. And we were just in talking about priorities. It wasn't my top priority. I think that, yeah, you have your middle relievers. They're your failed starting pitchers.

[Sean Pendergast]

So.

[Seth Payne]

But knowing that there's going to be a wild card somewhere along the way, I would say a middle reliever right now would be fourth.

[Sean Pendergast]

Fourth for middle reliever. Okay. So blindly rank fourth for middle reliever. All right, Cole, what is next?

[Cole Thompson]

So you're both going for then?

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. Yeah. Well, we'll take sepa go now. I'll go. I'll rank the next one.

[Cole Thompson]

Left handed, power hitting outfielder.

[Sean Pendergast]

Oh, boy. Okay. I think this is one of the top two.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, it's.

[Sean Pendergast]

This is either starting Pitching or left handed power hitting out.

[Cole Thompson]

Power hitting outfielder.

[Sean Pendergast]

Okay. Is this someone.

[Seth Payne]

That's Cam Smith.

[Sean Pendergast]

That's.

[Seth Payne]

Is it okay if he strikes out all the time too?

[Cole Thompson]

And he's a righty.

[Sean Pendergast]

He's a righty and he's a righty.

[Cole Thompson]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Oh, sorry. I was thinking outfielder. Sorry.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, yeah. We saw a left hand, power.

[Seth Payne]

Left handed, power.

[Sean Pendergast]

Left handed power bat in the outfield. I am gonna put that at two.

[Cole Thompson]

Okay.

[Sean Pendergast]

Left handed power outfielder. I kind of like how this is shaping up so far.

[Cole Thompson]

Number three. Number two. It is the left handed power hitting outfielder. And number four is the relief pitch.

[Sean Pendergast]

So we have 1, 3 and 5 still there? Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

[Cole Thompson]

Number three, three utility bat. Just anywhere, anywhere utility bat. The Mauricio Dubon type player who can go in the outfield.

[Sean Pendergast]

Why'd you have to bring up his name?

[Cole Thompson]

I know.

[Sean Pendergast]

I miss him. I miss him so much.

[Cole Thompson]

Hey, Nick Allen.

[Sean Pendergast]

Great.

[Seth Payne]

Have you kept up with him? How is he? Got up to that hot start and

[Sean Pendergast]

then I kind of. He's cooled off, but he is still very popular in Atlanta right now. Yeah, he's still. Yeah, exactly. He's still Mauricio Dubon.

[Cole Thompson]

But again, he can play anywhere. If you need him to go to first base, he can. If he needs to go to outfield.

[Sean Pendergast]

You're talking a guy like that?

[Cole Thompson]

Guy like that anywhere.

[Sean Pendergast]

I don't envy you. Seth, where are you putting this one utility guy?

[Cole Thompson]

Do you really need another infielder?

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

We've got three categories left and we haven't had a. This might be the wild card here. So I'm going to. I'm going to say I'll put this five.

[Sean Pendergast]

Five. Okay. Okay. Utility infielder. I.

[Seth Payne]

Please don't tweet the results of this out because it's going to make us look like idiots. I know what's going to happen. I know what's going to happen. Like the number two thing is going to be. Yeah, I think something ridiculous.

[Sean Pendergast]

I put left into power outfielder at 2. I feel okay about that now. Let's wait and see what the last two are.

[Cole Thompson]

So number two is left handed power bat in the outfield.

[Sean Pendergast]

Number four is relief pitcher.

[Cole Thompson]

Number five is utility man.

[Sean Pendergast]

Just utility guy. Could be anything.

[Cole Thompson]

Yep.

[Sean Pendergast]

That's kind of what Bryce Matthews is defensively at least. Okay. But I'm assuming this guy can actually hit and doesn't strike out 50%.

[Cole Thompson]

He is a guy that is a contact here that you put 70.

[Sean Pendergast]

You're trading for him. He's got some chops.

[Cole Thompson]

He's Adding in value to you.

[Sean Pendergast]

All right, here we go.

[Cole Thompson]

Okay, your next option is second base. Just in general.

[Sean Pendergast]

So now that's going to be third.

[Seth Payne]

Crap. Well, Altube can play left field.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, same.

[Cole Thompson]

We could try.

[Seth Payne]

We know that. Have they ever tried that? Is that.

[Cole Thompson]

Remember when Bren was supposed to reside year and that's why they were going

[Sean Pendergast]

to move into left to begin with?

[Seth Payne]

Just move Altube out to left field. It'll be great.

[Sean Pendergast]

Seth, you had to put utility. You had to put utility guy at 5 and now I have to park second baseman and disrespect Jose. Al, I've disrespected him enough on this show.

[Cole Thompson]

I say you've literally done it twice.

[Sean Pendergast]

Oh, my God. Oh, okay. Well, number one, blame Seth.

[Seth Payne]

All right, so Mick Allen's my utility guy until I die. Okay, I don't. You don't have to. You guys, I'm not gonna sit here and let you guys crap all over Nick Allen every damn day the way

[Sean Pendergast]

you like Matthews and their combined.510 ops.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, text slide.

[Cole Thompson]

Remember when we had too many fielders to trade it? Now we need one.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, no kidding. No kidding. Well, so what's left over?

[Cole Thompson]

The good news is that at number one, because you guys did save out.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yep.

[Cole Thompson]

Is starting pitching.

[Seth Payne]

Oh, okay.

[Sean Pendergast]

That's good.

[Cole Thompson]

So you survived it.

[Seth Payne]

Where'd second baseman end it? Third. Third.

[Sean Pendergast]

Maybe they won't get to that when they look at it. If Cole posted on social media.

[Seth Payne]

I stand by that. I trust Nick Allen better than anybody they have there at second base.

[Sean Pendergast]

All right, so the final, final list of needs as ranked blindly by Payne and Pendergast. Number one, starting pitching. I agree with that.

[Cole Thompson]

Warranted.

[Sean Pendergast]

Number two, left handed, power hitting outfielder.

[Cole Thompson]

Yep.

[Sean Pendergast]

Number three, second baseman.

[Cole Thompson]

We're trading. Yeah. See you later, buddy.

[Sean Pendergast]

I hate you, Cole. Number four, middle reliever. And number five, utility infielder. I would say most of that's pretty good.

[Seth Payne]

Between Nick Allen and Yiner. And playing first, I think you guys, you guys are way underrating what they already have.

[Cole Thompson]

Don't worry, we're gonna. We're gonna bring up somebody to play third base. East side praise goes to first.

[Sean Pendergast]

Can play first.

[Cole Thompson]

DH is now Christian Walker. Jordan goes to left field. Utility's fine. Guys, it's all good. Seth was thinking that way.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Question for Sean. This goes back to our previous segment where we outlined all the unattractive things that I do for the female race out there. What's your go to cigar? That's the thing. Here's the Thing about cigars and it being a hobby. That's why I categorize cigars, for me as more of a. An interest than a hobby is I smoke fewer than you would think. I smoke maybe a couple, two, three. I've smoked none this week because I've had a throat issue all week. I don't really have a go to cigar. I go. What I do is I go on my walk. I walk to Richards, which is owned by Specs, right there at the corner of Kirby and Westheimer, and I just go to the humidor and I pick out a couple. You know, just.

[Cole Thompson]

I just.

[Sean Pendergast]

I'm more about the price range than I am the actual brand.

[Seth Payne]

I was surprised that cigar smoking was as low as it was, just partly because, like, cigar smoke's got a pleasant smell to it. Like, I don't like and I don't like. I usually. I'm saying sensitive to smoke, man. Any. Like, if I were in a room full of cigar smoke, I'd be a mess. But I. But I enjoy the aroma of it from a distance. Same as, like, pipe smoke.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

So I think I. I feel like there are women again, when they were taking that survey, might have been looking at it and kind of thinking of the stereotype of just some fat guy and a wife beater with a cigar, you know, and not a. Not a bot. Like, not a glass of whiskey. A bottle of whiskey in the.

[Sean Pendergast]

This is. This is where you got to be super cognizant. Cognizant of that, though, Seth. The aroma of the whole thing. You're. You're. I think you're 100, right?

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Cigar smoke is not. It's not nearly in the same category of cigarettes, to me, at least as an offensive odor or smell. I like the smell. I obviously, I like the smell of it. I smoke them. You've really got to scrub your teeth the night after smoking cigars.

[Seth Payne]

It sticks to everything. Clothes, your mouth.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Your clothes.

[Sean Pendergast]

The clothes are solvable. You just throw them in the washer when you get home. But, yeah, like, you've really got it. Like, if you've had. If you've smoked a couple cigars and you just did a cursory brush of your teeth before you go to bed, you wake up tasting that, and I would imagine what. Not very attractive to whoever's.

[Seth Payne]

A lot of women, when they're taking that survey, are probably thinking about that time they made out with a guy who had been smoking cigars or something.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yes.

[Seth Payne]

Whereas I. Every now and then, I get two thoughts when I smell cigarette smoke. One was back when my dad used to, you know, zero degrees out. We're driving around in my dad's citation and he's got the windows rolled up, chain smoking Marlboros. And I'm somehow weirdly nostalgic for it. I'm like, I'm like, I'm like. It makes me kind of nostalgic for my dad. And then the other would be kind of some of the, some of the scarier girls I made out with in high school.

[Sean Pendergast]

Oh, yeah.

[Seth Payne]

You know that smell of like. Yeah, it's nasty. But boy, she was, she was kind of. Well, she was nasty too.

[Sean Pendergast]

She was. There's a correlation. I don't feel bashful in saying that.

[Cole Thompson]

Here's what I think counts for a hobby when it comes to cigar smoking. If you go to a cigar bar and you have a box there.

[Sean Pendergast]

Oh, that's a good one.

[Cole Thompson]

You are known there to be able to pay the monthly locker for a locker, basically and then go and enjoy the smoke. Because I have a buddy that lives in South Carolina. He, he literally has a locker where he goes once a week.

[Sean Pendergast]

I like going to cigar lounges and smoking and enjoying it with other cigar smokers. I've never gotten to that level.

[Cole Thompson]

I feel it. But that's like a hobby because you're actually investing into it.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Well, as I like Les Alexander, remember he had that like super exclusive cigar, cigar club that he opened in New York where like I'm guessing, like if she, if you find out that your, your billionaire boyfriend is into like owning, owning a super exclusive cigar club, he has his own locker or something, it's probably a little bit more attractive.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, probably. The gold diggers will make an exception. All right, Pain and Pendergast with you. Cole Thompson in with us as well. Into the 9 o' clock hour we go. Take a mania time. Take a mania time. Adam Schefter I think is three, three weeks and counting right now as the defending champ for taking.

[Seth Payne]

He needs to be deposed.

[Sean Pendergast]

He needs to be taken down. So we've got, we've got a few challengers. We'll see if these work. Seth Payne is the judge, the jury and the executioner. We will do Take a Mania for a Friday. Coming up next, History that Doesn't Suck is a legit, hard hitting American history

[Seth Payne]

podcast told through entertaining stories. History that Doesn't Suck.

[Sean Pendergast]

An Odyssey podcast available wherever you get your podcasts. Playing mobile games and not getting rewarded

[Seth Payne]

for it is a thing of the past. Why haven't you switched yet if you're going to spend the time playing, you

[Sean Pendergast]

should be earning rewards doing it.

[Seth Payne]

With mistplay, you play what you love

[Cole Thompson]

and earn points for gift cards and more.

[Sean Pendergast]

Plus, you can enter the Mist play

[Seth Payne]

sweepstakes for your chance to win tens of thousands of dollars in cash bundles and gift cards every week. So yeah, keep playing games, just maybe

[Sean Pendergast]

get rewarded for it.

[Seth Payne]

Download mistplay today and enter for your chance to win.

[Sean Pendergast]

All right, Take a Mania time. Let's, let's do this. Here, the defending champ. For those who are new to Take a Mania, this is our bad take of the week segment and we treat it like a championship wrestling belt where the champ tries to. We have, we have challengers that try to dethrone what is now a three week champion in Adam Schefter and Ben,

[Seth Payne]

we've played this enough that when we play Adam Schefter here, just cut it off. After the money part where he, where he talks about the NFL. Stupid part. Yeah, after the stupid part. Yeah, you know, you know, you're aware of the clip?

[Sean Pendergast]

Yes. Yes. All right, so here we go. This is Adam Schefter talking about quarterback who was banned from college football. And, and no supplemental draft for you. Brendan Sorsby, NFL essentially sent him a letter and the NFL is declining to

[Seth Payne]

hold a supplemental draft. And honestly, something was amiss with this

[Cole Thompson]

all along because every time you spoke to people around the league about when

[Sean Pendergast]

the supplemental draft would be and whether

[Cole Thompson]

or not there would be a supplementary,

[Sean Pendergast]

I always got pauses and there were

[Seth Payne]

never clear kind of answers.

[Sean Pendergast]

And like, the commissioner's got to decide to have it.

[Cole Thompson]

I'm like, what is the issue? Well, the issue is that the league,

[Seth Payne]

despite any gambling partnerships, the league really does not want any part of gambling,

[Cole Thompson]

no matter how serious it is.

[Seth Payne]

There you go. Okay. It's a, it's a stupid thing to say from a guy that does not know which master he should be obeying at any given time.

[Sean Pendergast]

Think about, think about how that sentence

[Seth Payne]

reads transcribed almost like despite his many murder victims, this guy has no interest in murdering people, killing anybody.

[Sean Pendergast]

Right? Yeah. So, okay, so that, that is the champ. We don't need to readjudicate. Why? I think people just heard. What, why? So, so let's get to the challengers here. The first one, Vince Goodwill, who is. Makes his second appearance here as a Take a Mania challenger. So Victor Wembayama, he. Vince Goodwill's an NBA writer. He works for espn, formerly of Yahoo. And he was on First Take this week and he had this take. Victor Wembayama just signed a max contract recently but took less money than he could have if he had waited one more year. If he had waited one more year, he could have really maxed out. So he took the money now, less money now in part because it's guaranteed now you, you know, burn the hand. And two, this is going to help them sign Stefan Castle and Dylan Harper and be able to continue to build this team. Vince Goodwill does not like the precedent that Wembayama is setting by taking less money to build this team.

[Seth Payne]

The problem is the spurs have three

[Sean Pendergast]

potential max players on their roster.

[Cole Thompson]

Roster.

[Seth Payne]

Victor Wyama, Steph Castle, Dylan Harper, Victor

[Sean Pendergast]

Wimanyama maybe can make up that 5% with his Nike deal and everything else.

[Seth Payne]

But does that mean Dylan Harper and Steph Castle they have to take less because Victor Wyama took less. I have yet to see anybody buy a jersey that says we save money

[Sean Pendergast]

on the back of it.

[Seth Payne]

I've yet to see somebody buy a jersey that says cap space and flexibility.

[Sean Pendergast]

Like you're coming to see Victor Women Miniyama and you're watching these players like they have a very finite period of time to maximize their earnings potential. I know Victor Women Yama is an alien and everything else.

[Seth Payne]

He's going to get every dollar that's owed to him.

[Sean Pendergast]

But I don't know if I want to applaud this because I'll tell you this.

[Seth Payne]

When's the last time we asked an

[Sean Pendergast]

owner to sacrifice some money or whatever

[Seth Payne]

it is or ownership groups to sacrifice

[Sean Pendergast]

money for the sake of winning. The fact that you're putting players in a spot where they have to be

[Seth Payne]

both player and executive, give them two salaries then because they're doing two people's jobs.

[Sean Pendergast]

And I don't like that.

[Seth Payne]

Okay, two questions, two questions here. One, is Victor Emanyama an adult? He's an adult, can make his own decision.

[Sean Pendergast]

Let me, let me google.

[Cole Thompson]

Technically he is a, you know, 21 year old fact.

[Sean Pendergast]

Check this out. Is he an adult?

[Cole Thompson]

Is he? Yes, he's an adult. He can't make adult decisions in life.

[Seth Payne]

And two, does Vince Goodwill actually work for the NBA Players association and that he's overly concerned about him somehow setting a precedent that guys, guys. Hey, guys. Might decide to be selfless based on this precedent. And yeah. And then number three, like what's wrong with a bunch of guaranteed money? Like so, like, you know, the agents and people, people who don't actually put their bodies at risk, love to say the chances of a catastrophic injury that would, would be career threatening are very, very Low. That's cool for you, bro.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yep.

[Seth Payne]

But like the bird in the hand versus a. Yeah. Okay. The very, very small percentage chance that he might blow his knee out and never be worth that money again. It's very, very small. But you know what's never a bad thing? A boatload of money. Even if you're acting in your own self interest.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Okay. This is a weird. You know, I don't like the weird ones.

[Cole Thompson]

Yep.

[Seth Payne]

Like the ones that are almost hard. It's too hard to figure out.

[Cole Thompson]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

And yet it's emphatical. Worse. Which means better than Adam Schefter's bad.

[Sean Pendergast]

Okay. So it wins.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Schefter.

[Seth Payne]

Wow. Almost.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Like, listen, listen. In defense of Victor Wen Benyama, another thing I don't really like doing, like, hey, listen, bro, you don't have to be my nanny. Okay? All right. Like, I'm Victor Wembin freaking Yama.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yep. Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

I can make my own decisions, Wendy.

[Sean Pendergast]

Dammit.

[Seth Payne]

Oh, you know what he's acting like? He's acting like management took him into a dark room and threatened him or something. You better do this.

[Cole Thompson]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

The other thing that I didn't like about Vince Goodwill's take is when have we asked owners to spend more money? I'm like, every time they go into the luxury tax weekend. That's what I'm talking about.

[Cole Thompson]

Text line says Goodwill is the NBA's hoa Florio.

[Seth Payne]

Oh, yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

We like. Hoa Florio is a big character on this show. All right, next one. Ryan Clark. There's a very specific Seth reason why I have this one in in here. Ryan Clark is miffed that Lamar Jackson is number 69 on the NFL's top 100.

[Seth Payne]

I expected executives to not know where to place him.

[Cole Thompson]

I expected.

[Seth Payne]

I expected marketers and brands to not understand the power of his voice. What I didn't expect is dudes who have to line up in pads on Sundays and Thursdays and Wednesdays and Fridays and whatever the hell other days that we're going to see NFL games this year to not understand how scary it is to walk on the field, feel when this dude is right and ain't that much changed in one year. We're coming off of a year where it was basically one of the best quarterback years we had ever seen where Josh Allen actually wins the MVP and he's the first team all pro quarterback. It's not just disrespectful, it's almost stupid that he is ranked so low and I don't know if he cares about it at all. But this says a lot about this league and how quickly we forget what

[Sean Pendergast]

Lamar Jackson has accomplished. Seth, you know, I enjoy the NFL's top 100.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

This is in here solely because Ryan Clark is miffed.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. He's angry. Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

About the NFL.

[Seth Payne]

I want to hear him rail about the. Just the. How it is, like, mathematically flawed. The way they do the entire top 100 is you're gonna be like, yeah, but I, Like, I see the points that he's making.

[Cole Thompson]

So you got 51 minutes. He's got time to get. Get the point across on how they make top 100.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, so the. The. I mean, not that much has changed, I guess, statistically, a lot changed. He threw for 2500 yards last year. But no, not. Not. I see where he's coming from. Not bad enough.

[Sean Pendergast]

All right. Not bad enough. All right. Okay, this next one is Kendrick Perkins. He was on yesterday on First Take, the day after the spies, in which, if you missed the ESPYs, Jalen Brunson in the New York Knicks cleaned up. This is almost like a New York Knicks celebration. Jalen Brunson was named as all or part of four different ESPYs. Kendrick Perkins says this clinches it. First ballot hall of Famer.

[Seth Payne]

I grew up in the household with my grandparents, God's rest they soul, and they used to always make me sit at the table and say, you better not get up until you finish your food. That's exactly what Jalen Brunson did.

[Sean Pendergast]

He finished his food.

[Seth Payne]

And look, with all those accomplishments, last night. Night cemented him as a first ballot hall of Famer, as a future first

[Sean Pendergast]

ballot hall of Famer.

[Seth Payne]

You can't tell me with all of those accomplishments that happened just this year, that when Jalen Brunson retires, that he's not going to be walking right into the hall of Fame.

[Sean Pendergast]

I hope I'm there. Hope I get the invite.

[Seth Payne]

Wait, wait.

[Sean Pendergast]

The ESPYs, you think is what. That ESPYs honor is what cemented it? Okay, good enough. I just wanted to make sure we got the bewilderment.

[Seth Payne]

Wait, is that what he was actually saying? Yes.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yes.

[Seth Payne]

Oh.

[Sean Pendergast]

Oh, he was.

[Seth Payne]

I thought he was.

[Sean Pendergast]

Confirmed it. I. I didn't. I didn't keep going because he. All I did was confirm, yes. I had to play Shay Cornett and Brian Windhorst. Double checking to make sure on espn, of all things.

[Seth Payne]

I know. I was trying to think of, like, okay, yeah. He's like, no, no, no.

[Sean Pendergast]

Like, because they showed a graphic set While he was doing that, of all the ESPYs that Jay Jalen Brunson won last night, there's the reason why he's gonna be a surefire hall of Fame.

[Seth Payne]

All right, this is where I'm gonna give Kendrick Perkins the benefit of the doubt on this.

[Cole Thompson]

Okay.

[Seth Payne]

I think that if anything, I thought that maybe it wasn't like the actual ESPY awards that he collected or anything like that. It was more the. It's just like, it's the ESPYs, dude. They had the best convinced screen.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yes.

[Seth Payne]

That's. That's what convinced them.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yes.

[Seth Payne]

It wasn't like where he's finished in MVP rankings and. Yeah. Year by year. No, no.

[Sean Pendergast]

The final nail that's going to get him in there. First ballot, hall of fame, four ESPYs. Four ESPYs on Tuesday night.

[Seth Payne]

Sometimes Kendrick, like, Kendrick throws a lot of stuff out there that I. He knows is absurd.

[Sean Pendergast]

Kendrick gets graded on a curve on this.

[Seth Payne]

He throws a lot of stuff out there that, you know, like, he's too smart to really believe some of the stuff he says. He's throwing it out there because he. He knows it's crazy. Yeah.

[Cole Thompson]

Oh, I feel like he loses whenever he throws food combinations into the conversation

[Sean Pendergast]

or there's little analogies about my mom told me to eat everything.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. You know what? This is the one where I feel like Goodwill was like dead serious in what he was saying. And. And he delivered it really well too. And you know, you get points for delivery, so. No, no, this does. This doesn't take over trying to try to pretend like you're Wembanyama's Gotcha.

[Sean Pendergast]

Okay. Okay. I want to make sure we get to one of these. So, Cole, I'm going to let you pick.

[Cole Thompson]

Okay.

[Sean Pendergast]

Of the next two on the list here, Hercules, Gomez or Tom Brady.

[Cole Thompson]

Oh, it's the Tom Brady.

[Sean Pendergast]

Tom Brady. Okay, so Tom Brady. Tom Brady.

[Seth Payne]

I'm going to tell you before we play this, and I've only heard part of this, like, I love it to be a really bad take, but it's got to be delivered well. And I question. I question how much Tom Brady can bring to it with his. With his voice and delivery.

[Sean Pendergast]

We'll find out. Here's Tom Brady at Fanatics Fest. He's doing a sit down interview. He's doing Cody Rhodes podcast, actually. So he. And they're doing it live in front of an audience, and Tom Brady telling Cody Rhodes, I think I want to take a shot at this WWE some storyline for me to get in the mix.

[Seth Payne]

I Feel like I'm retired from football. Have opportunity to go out there, still showcase.

[Sean Pendergast]

I'm a little bit of an athlete and you know, my boy Gronk's done it.

[Seth Payne]

I've seen obviously Logan Paul do it.

[Sean Pendergast]

I think I could get in there for at least one match. Match, right. Come on, Nick. Come on, make it happen. Okay. And Nick is Nick Khan, who. Who runs wwe. Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

I mean, he's playing to the crowd there. I do. Like, I. I would. Would he wear. I would honestly, Brady, wearing like just nothing but the Jobber trunks.

[Sean Pendergast]

Speedo.

[Seth Payne]

Yes. That's where the Speedo.

[Sean Pendergast]

So skinny.

[Seth Payne]

I know. Wait, you don't want him to go

[Cole Thompson]

full Rey Mysterio so he can cover his face?

[Sean Pendergast]

No, no mask. No mask. No mask.

[Seth Payne]

I can't make this a champion because I actually really want to see it.

[Sean Pendergast]

I do too.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

I'm being honest. I do too.

[Seth Payne]

Not good enough.

[Sean Pendergast]

All right. I had no idea. I had no idea who Tanner Anderson was until yesterday. And I'm still dubious that he's actually a real person and not AI, but this popped up on my timeline yesterday. This is a fellow, a streamer by the name of Tanner Anderson, who I. Whose gimmick I think is talking about bad contract contracts.

[Seth Payne]

Okay.

[Sean Pendergast]

And so he's doing a power ranking of bad contracts in Major League Baseball and he gets to Jose Altuve. And this is what he says about Jose Altuve. I might be a bit premature in calling this a terrible contract, but please forgive me for not trusting a cheating

[Cole Thompson]

hobbit as he ages into his 30s

[Sean Pendergast]

to stay productive in a sport where historically superstars fall off a cliff at a certain point unless they are taking copious amounts of PEDs. But then again, Altuve, he has such low moral principles, I'm sure he will inject anything into his system to keep himself relevant.

[Seth Payne]

And knowing Major League Baseball, they will

[Sean Pendergast]

try to sweep it under a rug knowing it is bad for the sport.

[Cole Thompson]

But regardless, Jose Altuve, he is the face of the astros organization, a two

[Sean Pendergast]

time champion, a former MVP, and this team handing him a five year old 125 million dollar deal because they wanted him to retire with the organization. When this contract ends, he will be 39 years old.

[Seth Payne]

So I am telling you now, if

[Sean Pendergast]

this dwarf keeps playing at an all

[Cole Thompson]

star level until then, he's up to

[Seth Payne]

something because this guy is about as

[Sean Pendergast]

trustworthy as Donald Trump talking about the Epstein files.

[Seth Payne]

Okay, so all right, aside from all the slander about Jose Altuve and his height, like what the hell is he Talking about. Okay. Continues to play at an all star level. We're talking about Jose Altube.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Okay.

[Sean Pendergast]

If he play the last part, is that the part that's confusing the last

[Seth Payne]

part there about why he's talking like Altuve is currently playing as if he could only be because of steroids.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, yeah. And he's.

[Seth Payne]

That's a part. Yeah. Like. Yeah. You even hear that part? You were thinking about the insults. No, no, no, no. Like, it's so misinformed.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

It's almost just so ridiculously misinformed that it's obvious he's just trying to come up with a bunch of insults for Jose Altuve, but he hasn't even bothered to look at any stats or stats or anything.

[Sean Pendergast]

And if I know you, you don't reward uneducated bad takes.

[Seth Payne]

Right, right, right. Yeah, it's better off. It's almost like it's better off if you sound like you have some semblance of, like, goodwill actually there. Like, he's. He's a. It's. You got to actually think about, like, wait, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a second. Like you. He makes enough of an it that it almost sways me a little bit, but it's actually really, really bad. No. Yeah. Play the whole thing again, Ben. The whole thing now. Don't. Okay? Don't play the whole thing again. No, the problem is he's saying he's accusing him of taking steroids for. And that being the reason that he's playing at such a high level. Playing at a high level.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, that. So that part's just wrong.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. No, he's just name calling.

[Sean Pendergast]

Okay.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Doesn't win.

[Seth Payne]

Doesn't win. Win.

[Sean Pendergast]

He got what he wanted. It got played on this show.

[Cole Thompson]

Tanner Anderson, he got it brought up in Houston. Be a pompous three.

[Sean Pendergast]

Bravo. Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

If Juve were taking steroids right now, I'd be most upset with his steroid dealer.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Cole Thompson]

It's like, dude, I'm not paying for 245. I'm paid for 310.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, man, we need to have that man arrested for 11 home runs.

[Cole Thompson]

I wanted 23 at this point. Come on, dude, get it going.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. Yeah. All right. Someone said they want Tom Brady versus Peyton Manning in wwe.

[Cole Thompson]

That'd be a fun match.

[Sean Pendergast]

That would be an interesting visual. And they both have to wear the jobber speedo trunks that Seth wants. Wants them to wear. All right, what's going to look good?

[Cole Thompson]

One's gonna look horrible.

[Sean Pendergast]

So, Vince Goodwill, new champ for Take a Mania Was he the preview?

[Seth Payne]

Did he win the chat? Was he the one that had the take about the, the participation trophy?

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. And I don't think think you rewarded him for that take. Yeah, I don't think he won.

[Seth Payne]

Well, plus he also. I kind of, you know, I didn't because I think he was kind of making it like more of an exaggeration or an analogy. Yeah, yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

I don't remember him winning. All right, so today is. Today's kind of a big day on the show. Today is Ben Gary's last day as the producer of Pain and Pendergast. We know Ben's not wild about. Not wild about coming on and giving a speech like Winston Churchill about his time as producer of Pain and Pendergast. So Ben speaks through hotkeys. We're going to have Ben pick his four or five favorite hot keys and then we will opine on them. I feel like that's a great way to salute the hard work that Ben does without Ben having to. Unless Ben wants to get on there and chat. Ben, you're going to have to talk a little bit in the next segment, just so you know. But we want to salute Ben because he's done some phenomenal work for us these last several years. And we'll do that coming up.

[Seth Payne]

Up Next, sports radio 610 presents live from the West Point Lincoln and West

[Sean Pendergast]

Point Lincoln of Sugarland Studios. Here's Pain and Pendergast. All right, Pain and Pendergast with you. And we're getting some react on the text page. Ben, you've got fans out there. Just so you know. Ben Gary. That's good to know. Yes. Good to know. Yeah. Ben Gary, our producer. Today is Ben's last day as the producer of Pain and Pendergast. Gone but not forgotten. Ben is still Ben, you're still going to be doing Texans work, right?

[Cole Thompson]

Yes, sir.

[Sean Pendergast]

Pregame and post game.

[Seth Payne]

Yep.

[Sean Pendergast]

So I will still get to talk to you twice a day during the football season?

[Cole Thompson]

Yes.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. Or two shows. Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Ben and I aren't big heart to heart type guys. I don't think maybe Ben is, but I'm not. And so I'm going to say this now and embarrass him, but I don't want to make eye contact with him while I'm doing it. I just, I'm going to miss Ben a great, great, great, great deal because he is, he's been the person who's most patient with all of my issues that I've ever encountered in my life. And he's most often the victim of those same very issues I have with my inability to organize or keep track of my thoughts or anything. And it's like his, his patience and his coolness under pressure. When I might have a co host who's glaring at him. Ben just handles it all in stride.

[Sean Pendergast]

He does said. Including the glare. Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

And, and no. And I'll say this. Ben is. Ben has by far in my life been the person who most makes me laugh at myself when he roasts me with his little comments and everything.

[Sean Pendergast]

Very subtly.

[Seth Payne]

Yes.

[Sean Pendergast]

Good roaster.

[Seth Payne]

He can take shots at me, which I have zero sensitivity about and make me like laugh later on.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

During the day. I, I will miss you, Ben. Don't make eye contact with me.

[Sean Pendergast]

Don't make eye.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

As opposed to me when I rose Seth, and Seth's like, what the hell, man? So, and Ben, I will echo everything Seth said. And also people don't realize Ben is a one man show in there. So whether it's getting guests on the line, putting the podcast up, which like if you go, if you download our podcast, you subscribe to our podcast, all the, the episode and chapter descriptions and everything, it's really good and really detailed. And Ben does all that work while me getting in his ear going, hey, man, that cut that we were about to play, shelve that and go get this cut that you may have had from back on April 4th. Can you do that?

[Seth Payne]

No. You don't know?

[Sean Pendergast]

15 seconds.

[Seth Payne]

Well, one of the, like Sean and I like, our show is one of the highest rated podcasts in the entire company, like nationwide. And a huge part of that is that Ben does a really good job actually paying attention to how to, how to label things and talk, title things and cut them up and everything, Ben's

[Sean Pendergast]

a huge part of that. So Ben, we, we, we thank you. Thank you for everything, man. You've done, you've done a phenomenal job. You're most welcome. It's been a, it's been a hell of a ride. Yeah. It's been a hell of a ride. Yeah. And we're looking forward to still seeing you and everything like that. Now, I think the way that, I think the way, Ben, your love language for the audience really is, is the hotkeys in there. Because you're very good at picking the just the right time to play just the right hotkey. And you've got some in there that probably haven't even been unveiled yet, I would imagine. And if you want to mix one or two of those in. That's great. But as far as the ones that have been part of the show, like a staple of the show. Let's just go through these right now. Go ahead and. And. And just hit us with them and we'll react to them. Oh, man.

[Seth Payne]

Oi.

[Cole Thompson]

That was gonna be awesome.

[Sean Pendergast]

That's Seth.

[Seth Payne]

That's me doing my.

[Sean Pendergast]

Being British.

[Seth Payne]

Doing my British. Either Australian or whatever thing I can't even remember. Do you remember what that was for, Ben?

[Cole Thompson]

No.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, the British every so often.

[Sean Pendergast]

So anytime. And really, what's funny is there's two actually. Anytime Seth is European, it's oi. And anytime Seth is Hispanic.

[Seth Payne]

What the hell's this? Quesadilla?

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah,

[Seth Payne]

No, that's whenever I'm a. That's whenever I'm an American. That doesn't.

[Sean Pendergast]

I want to be Hispanic.

[Seth Payne]

That's whenever I'm being xenophobic. Yes.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, yeah. All right, hit us with some more, Ben. Let's see.

[Seth Payne]

So this one, she was a friend of my boyfriend.

[Cole Thompson]

Barely get to use that one.

[Sean Pendergast]

I can't remember. I can't remember the last time I heard that one. What was that?

[Seth Payne]

I wish I could to remember what these were about.

[Sean Pendergast]

Oh, my God. Yeah, Play that one again. We don't.

[Seth Payne]

She's a friend of my boyfriend.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, we haven't played that one enough.

[Seth Payne]

Oh, I miss that guy.

[Sean Pendergast]

I have.

[Seth Payne]

So. Okay.

[Cole Thompson]

Wonderful person, great personality that.

[Sean Pendergast]

The first three have all been Seth. I. There's at least one more in my head that I think there's gonna be of Seth, but Ben, you. It's your. This is your show, Ben. So you go ahead. What's your name? Next one.

[Seth Payne]

Oh, I like playgrounds. What was it? I like playgrounds. I like playgrounds.

[Cole Thompson]

I like playgrounds.

[Sean Pendergast]

Okay. I've never heard that one. You've been.

[Seth Payne]

That's something that he had. He was. You grabbed that for a reason.

[Cole Thompson]

Explain a little bit more.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, yeah, it sounds like Seth. He was holding that for blackmail.

[Seth Payne]

At some point, I'm gonna take back

[Sean Pendergast]

all those nice things you just said about him. What else you got in there, Ben?

[Seth Payne]

Just so you know, I'm not looking at your breasts at all because I respect you as a person, even though with my perip. Peripheral vision, I can see that they're pretty big. Yesterday in the staff meeting. Yeah, we weren't even on the air for that.

[Sean Pendergast]

Ben pulled that off the zoom call from the staff meeting. Good hockey.

[Seth Payne]

Oh, man. Oh, you get any.

[Sean Pendergast]

What else you got in there, Ben?

[Seth Payne]

You want an 11 year old to Work in your knife factory. Yeah, go for it. What the hell am I?

[Sean Pendergast]

This is the greatest. This is the greatest Seth Payne segment

[Seth Payne]

of all time in my fantasy version of Sex Addict Therapy. It's a raucous and hilarious place. I stand by that.

[Sean Pendergast]

I agree. That was a good take.

[Seth Payne]

Most of these are really good takes.

[Sean Pendergast]

Oh, my God. No, they're. They're all phenomenal. Oh, my God. Ben, anything else in there?

[Seth Payne]

Jeff Luna was, like, selling women's wear on the Internet.

[Sean Pendergast]

That's true.

[Seth Payne]

So he did before he got into baseball.

[Sean Pendergast]

These are, like, deleted scenes. I, I. Benny played, like, seven of them. I've only heard, like, four.

[Seth Payne]

These are all old. I used to be. I used to be funnier,

[Cole Thompson]

creative.

[Sean Pendergast]

Oh, okay.

[Cole Thompson]

Any.

[Seth Payne]

Can I take. Can you take a request, man?

[Cole Thompson]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

I'll see you.

[Seth Payne]

People love the. One of the ones that's most correct. Brandy roasting me. People love hearing a Brandy roasting me.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Oh, I'm Seth paid.

[Sean Pendergast]

I like to ramble on and tell dumb jokes. The laugh.

[Seth Payne]

The laugh is incredible. This interview is over.

[Sean Pendergast]

Oh, I forgot. Were you, Were you, Were you interviewing? Like, what was.

[Seth Payne]

That was during COVID I think.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yes, it was.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. Brandi was making fun of me at dinner, and I. And I had. And I recorded her doing it. Oh, my God.

[Sean Pendergast]

The laugh. The laugh is great. Do you, do you have a favorite David Cully hotkey in there, Ben, that you would like to play? Because I feel like that's. Oh, Cully gets a lot of traffic on this show.

[Seth Payne]

Smart, tough, selfless. Selfless is a tough one, though, too. Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Selfish.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, I know. I got. I, I, I, I can sympathize with him because it's tough. Sometimes selfless sounds like selfish a little bit. So in your brain you're thinking, like, I gotta really nail the S on this.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Wait, we're taking away from Ben, though. It's supposed to be.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, yeah. This is Ben.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

This has been saying Ben hit anything in there, man. This is like touch tunes for hotkeys. Right? Right Now, Seth, motorboat. Play that again and then play Brandy laughing afterwards. So they play the. It's a disturbing sequence. This getting a lot of react. Ben here. Ben, stop it. You're gonna get me fired in all caps. Cackling like a hyena. Oh, I forgot about this one.

[Seth Payne]

Throw my peanuts any damn place.

[Cole Thompson]

Wait, what?

[Sean Pendergast]

How many Seth Hotkeys do you have in there? Oh, I've got a bunch. You've got more?

[Cole Thompson]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Tight ends. Get your butts out of your heads

[Sean Pendergast]

and get going, butts out of your heads.

[Seth Payne]

He's insisting that the audience just wants to be foon sped.

[Sean Pendergast]

I remember that. I remember that. I, I he. Play that again.

[Seth Payne]

Again. He's insisting that the audience just wants to be foon sped.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, that's. I, I wanted to get food sped. T shirts made after that.

[Seth Payne]

About.

[Sean Pendergast]

I don't, I don't know, but the, the, the cacophony or the cadence of it sounds like a, that sounds like a Covid show.

[Seth Payne]

Oh, yeah. He's insisting that the audience just wants to be phone sped.

[Sean Pendergast]

You know what I mean? Like, that sounds like almost like a zoom call.

[Seth Payne]

I blame all of these on. They were more Mondays after a Sunday night game. Yeah, I was sleep deprived or something.

[Sean Pendergast]

What else, Ben?

[Seth Payne]

We'll fry that up. Oh, yeah, that was. I was talking about Americans and our ability to turn anything in even better by frying it up. I think I was like, I was, I think I was, I think I was ranting against Europeans on that one.

[Sean Pendergast]

Okay, there's one. The one that's. He's been. You still have not played the one that I had in my mind when I said you played these first three that are. Seth. What? Where is this one? I think you know what it is.

[Seth Payne]

You go full Ted Bundy.

[Sean Pendergast]

I think that's Seth's most famous of all those hotkeys we just played. If I were to do the Mount Rushmore of Seth hotkeys, I would say

[Seth Payne]

you go full Ted Bundy.

[Sean Pendergast]

Full Ted Bundy. Oy.

[Cole Thompson]

Oh.

[Sean Pendergast]

Oi, Quesadilla.

[Seth Payne]

What the hell's this? Quesadilla.

[Sean Pendergast]

I'll let you pick the fourth one. Ben. Any of the ones you played are perfectly fine.

[Cole Thompson]

Oh, I got a new one.

[Seth Payne]

A slip and slide, whatever it might be, Which I think honestly might have opened up a whole new avenue, a whole new revenue stream for them.

[Sean Pendergast]

I told you after you said that, I'm like, don't feel bad. You can get hurt on a slip and slide very easily.

[Seth Payne]

Right, Right. Yeah. That was a live read for. Boy, the listeners caught that one. It was good to know. I sent some of those comments to Mokarim to let them know that people are listening to the ad.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yes.

[Seth Payne]

Because we got like 20 text messages saying slip and slide.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, really?

[Cole Thompson]

What are you doing on Saturday, Seth?

[Seth Payne]

Yes.

[Sean Pendergast]

Slip and slide.

[Seth Payne]

A slip and slide. Whatever it might be.

[Sean Pendergast]

I just love how serious you are. Like in that one. Like, you, you were, you were in live mode.

[Seth Payne]

Hit me with a go die.

[Sean Pendergast]

Oh, go die everywhere. That's the fourth one on the Mount Rushmore right there.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. Again, that was back when I used to rant more and I used to just be more, I don't know, less well educated, adjusted. Because I'm so well adjusted now.

[Sean Pendergast]

You're well adjusted. Now you're well. Ben, we say all this to say thank you for everything you've done for the show, man. Best of luck in everything you do, and we're looking forward to still getting to see you and chat with you and all those things on Texans game days and whatnot. Thank you guys. Been a pleasure. All right, that was good. And that segment popped. I'm laughing. This segment is so good. Hashtag thanks, Ben. Ben, you got a hashtag. Nice job.

[Seth Payne]

I thought we might get a Sean one in there or something.

[Sean Pendergast]

I don't know. I'm fine with how that segment went.

[Seth Payne]

There's other ones.

[Sean Pendergast]

Insane as you pretty much got like you're in my phone as co host.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, that's a good one. Yeah. There we go.

[Sean Pendergast]

Okay, good, good. All right, Payne and Pender gas with you. Cole Thompson with us. One more segment to go. All right, let's get ready. Let's get ready for the Astros this weekend. The new season win total is out for the Astros. Astros over or under on this number and how much of the big questions that the Astros need to get answered positively for them to go over this win total. We'll do that coming up next. Hey, this is Richard Deitch, the host of the sports media podcast. If you're interested in what's happening with all the places where you consume sports,

[Cole Thompson]

the sports media podcast has you covered.

[Sean Pendergast]

I've been turning down interviews all week. Koda Copy reached out. Oprah, George Stephanopoulos. So I said no. I was booked on the Deitch podcast before the Taylor Swift phenomenon. I must live up to my responsibility. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. All right, so I should have done this math during the. During the break, but I was too busy still wiping tears out of my eyes from the previous segment. If you missed missed it, go back and listen to it. We. We said said goodbye or saying goodbye to Ben, our producer, and we did so by Ben essentially turning the computer in there into a Seth Payne jukebox of hotkeys.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, it was a tear jerking goodbye to. To Ben was in that. People were crying. We got them all on the text line. Brandy. Brandy texted me and said she was crying.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tears of laughter, tears of sad madness. Tears nonetheless, all of them.

[Seth Payne]

So the Ben. Ben was your first. Was it right during COVID when you. When you started on the show. Yeah, yeah. It was right. Right in the midst of Kobe.

[Sean Pendergast]

Oh, okay. Who was, who was a producer before you? Do you remember? I think Austin was doing you guys show before that. Oh, okay. Yeah. Oh that's. Yeah. May have been doing our show. We. We have our Seth.

[Cole Thompson]

Our.

[Sean Pendergast]

What is Today is the 17th. Our Seth, our. Our you and me. Our seven year anniversary is next Wednesday. How about that?

[Cole Thompson]

Yeah, I feel like it's been longer.

[Sean Pendergast]

I didn't realize seven years feels like forever. Seven years. Ditto. No, it's been a good. It's been. It's been a great seven years. It's been awesome. But yeah, seven year anniversary on. On Wednesday next week.

[Seth Payne]

So I think Ben is. Ben, how long have you been with 6, 10, 15 years. Yeah, 15 years. Ben Lopez and I are the. I think we're the longest tenured in 610.

[Sean Pendergast]

Right. Yeah, I'll be. I'll be 13 on January. 13 years on January 1st. So I need to. I need to wipe out Ben, you and Lopez.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

So I get to the top of the mountain. Like the king of the hill game.

[Cole Thompson]

Yeah, you're playing king of the hill.

[Sean Pendergast]

King of the hill. Like the game Cole, you gotta outlive.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. So we're like John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Just try to outlive the other Fathers

[Sean Pendergast]

of Sports Radio 610 died four hours apart.

[Cole Thompson]

Six to say beat you.

[Sean Pendergast]

That's right. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So the. So the Astros are currently fellas on a 78 win pace. Okay. 47 and 51 is a pace of 78 wins are over under to begin the season to be in the season was 84 and a half. It is adjusted now because you can bet here at the all star break if you want to, you know, if you didn't get in the first time. Or do you want to pile some more human monies on on top. 70 over under Seth and Cole. 79 and a half is the revised number. Do you think that the 80 wins would mean that they are. They've 80 would get you there. You would be two games under.500 for the season, but you'd be two games over.500 the rest of the way right from now moving forward. And we know they've played after Seth. You reset the season on May 15th. They've played actually at a decent like 92 win clip. So they've been playing better back baseball. 79 and a half over under.

[Seth Payne]

I'll take the over on that. Yeah, I think and honestly, that's why I, that's why I covet a starting pitcher more so than the outfielder right now because they look, they've been, they've been winning baseball despite their starting pitching being so undependable that I, like I did. I'd love the ability to have more offensive firepower, to have a better bottom half, bottom part of the lineup and everything. But I feel like that's just like the thing that's going to do you under is the game where, yeah, you score 10 runs, but you allowed 11.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Cole Thompson]

I'm just glad you don't cover the second baseman shot, Seth. Sean does though.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what's yours over? Under seven over?

[Cole Thompson]

I would say so. I think that right now the big question is can you get healthy enough in the rotation to where you don't need to go for the ace that you need to pair alongside with 100 brown, but you can bring in a back end guy and because of whatever money you're able to free on up, get yourself another outfield bat. And the outfield bat, nobody's asking him to hit like in the cleanup spot. They're saying go in the six hole and be able to go 275.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. Just keep the train moving.

[Cole Thompson]

Yeah, yeah. When there's runners in scoring position, if you get like a Christian Walker or a Jose Altuve on, you can drive them in from second. That, that, that's what you're asking for at this point?

[Sean Pendergast]

Yep. I, I'm, I'm over as well. I would go over. I, I, I think the, the thing that, the thing that concerns me is if they don't trade for a starting pitcher, if they do the thing they did last year, like two years ago, they traded for Kikuchi. That was a really good trade. They don't make the playoffs without you say Kikuchi two years ago. So that was a good trade. Last year the approach was much more like, well, we got this guy coming back and this guy coming back and that guy coming back. And that didn't work at all. The, the, the list of guys who have come back from these surgeries, Tommy John or whatever, that it pitched well is minuscule. Like it's Justin Verlander a few years ago in 2022. And other than that, like Javier hasn't pitched well. Luis Garcia, Jose or Kitty, they're not even here anymore. That Lance McCullers, the litany of surgeries that he had.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, I mean, yeah, he's in a whole separate category unto himself.

[Cole Thompson]

He's Also in a whole separate state now. So there's. That's at least the blessing.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

No, and he's not here anymore either. Right. But like that. That's why I can't just go. Well, Renell Blanco, last time we saw him, he pitched really well. And then what happened? He had Tommy John surgery. Oh, okay. So he's coming back with Neski. So Javier has not been good in the outing, you know, the one outing he's had since coming back. So I, that, that part. I, I, the. I feel like the, the ranking we, the blind ranking we did earlier, I think nailed it. Starting pitching is the number one need for this team right now. I'm going to over 78 and a half. The biggest reason I am. Or 79 and a half. Sorry. The biggest thing that's been encouraging for me is actually on the offensive side where they've shown a. They've shown an ability over the last few weeks to never be out of a game. They've. They've had a lot like over the last couple of weeks, there have been several games where they've been trailing in the sixth or seventh inning. I know, Seth, you, you cited the record several weeks ago at the time where they were owing. What. Oh, and a big number when they were trailing from the seventh inning awning.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

They've shown a lot more fight in these games. Late in games which coincided with the

[Seth Payne]

return of Josh Haters.

[Sean Pendergast]

Having Hater back had the combination of having Hater back notwithstanding, the last game before the All Star break being a save that he blew, not a save that he blew, but he took the loss. The game was tied. He's been phenomenal. The combination of those two things, the offense's ability to generate runs late in games and the presence of Josh Hater, that's. That's the driving force behind my over.

[Seth Payne]

So.

[Cole Thompson]

So down but not out is the

[Sean Pendergast]

way down but not out. Yeah. Well.

[Seth Payne]

And I think Cole made a good point though, earlier when we were talking about this, which is. And I think this is what you said, Cole, correct me if I'm wrong, but there's the. Like, how much exactly is a starting pitcher going to start? Help you above and beyond what you already have, but especially considering, okay, you've got 10 millions of space, $10 million of room before the luxury tax. Yeah. What. What exactly are we talking about? And the type of starting pitcher you're going to bring in, there's not. You're probably not going to get somebody you feel like is a slam dunk. You know, guaranteed win.

[Cole Thompson]

You're not getting a Terry Scubble to come on through that door. You're getting a number five guy, a number four guy.

[Sean Pendergast]

I heard they're going to be in on the talks.

[Seth Payne]

Tarek, Scubal, I don't know when they were in on Talks back in 2014, you know, really, the Astros would make a, make an offer to a, to a, to a big name free agent that ended up being like $20 million per year.

[Sean Pendergast]

Oh yeah, yeah, that's right. I remember that a few off seasons

[Cole Thompson]

ago when the tag Texans were in on every offensive lineman like yeah, there was interest.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

And they went to the Bears instead.

[Sean Pendergast]

Well, we're due then. We're due. We're going to come through on one of these and it's going to be Tarik Scubal. He's going to be.

[Cole Thompson]

I, I like that pathway. Like the Tigers. Here's one though. Would you like Casey Mice? He's the number three starter for them.

[Sean Pendergast]

For the Tigers.

[Cole Thompson]

For the Tigers.

[Sean Pendergast]

What are his numbers? Give me the.

[Seth Payne]

You know, he wants you to answer before he gives you the numbers, which means your answer should be no. Yeah, that's a. That's a trap.

[Sean Pendergast]

Sean, how's he in general? General, how's he been this year?

[Cole Thompson]

For this season alone he's got 279 ERA and 14 starts and he's got 77.1 innings pitch. He's got a WHIP of 0.99.

[Sean Pendergast]

He'd be, he'd be their opening starter in a playoff series right now. Based on those numbers, he'd be at worst your number. At worst your number three.

[Cole Thompson]

Three at best, probably your number one.

[Sean Pendergast]

What do I got to give up to get him?

[Seth Payne]

That's the problem.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. What do I want?

[Seth Payne]

What do you have to give up? What do you have to give up? Like, what do you. What do you actually have?

[Sean Pendergast]

Not hh ff Half to give up. It's half to give up. Yeah. I look in a vacuum the numbers do they. Does he still have team control?

[Cole Thompson]

One year. This is the end.

[Sean Pendergast]

This is a rental.

[Cole Thompson]

It'd be a rental.

[Sean Pendergast]

So you'd be a rental. So you probably wouldn't have to give up too much.

[Seth Payne]

But what do you possess to give up?

[Sean Pendergast]

You.

[Cole Thompson]

You would have to give up probably one of your top 10 prospects, but not Kevin Al, not Alvarez, not N. And not the two guys you just draft in the first round.

[Sean Pendergast]

Right, right.

[Cole Thompson]

Like the Notre Dame kid's gonna be. Be your next big time pitcher.

[Sean Pendergast]

Of course he is. Of course he's got a good degree, man. He's got a good baseball iq, I'm sure. Yes, he does. He does. He doesn't need to use AI in the club in the dugout like all these cheating.

[Seth Payne]

I. I like to pretend I'm old school baseball guy. Which makes me furious that the Astros drafted all these college kids in the draft.

[Cole Thompson]

Give me the 18 year olds. The way that Seth tries to build his baseball team.

[Seth Payne]

That's right.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. Hell yeah. The fellas are here in the loop. John Lopez, Reggie Attatula. Gentlemen. Howdy. How you doing? Great. Did you guys want to pay your tributes to Ben Gary?

[Seth Payne]

I was going to go in there

[Sean Pendergast]

and then time got away.

[Seth Payne]

Ben, you are the man.

[Sean Pendergast]

You are the absolute man. How long you been here now?

[Cole Thompson]

15.

[Seth Payne]

He and I are about tied behind you, Lopez. Yeah, we're tied for second behind you and tenure, man.

[Sean Pendergast]

So you. Are you the most tenured person in the cluster right now? Yes, I am in the cluster.

[Seth Payne]

Me.

[Sean Pendergast]

Oh, on air. On air.

[Seth Payne]

On air.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. Okay. Me and Sarah got here about the same time. Okay. And then Aaron got here the next year.

[Seth Payne]

Aaron Kapner.

[Sean Pendergast]

Okay. Yeah. And that's. And you guys are the OGs.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. All right. Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. All right.

[Seth Payne]

Is that good or bad?

[Sean Pendergast]

Are you kidding me? Oh, it's. It's really, really good.

[Seth Payne]

But Ben's still working here. Ben's just gonna go off and pursue. Just. Right, right, right.

[Sean Pendergast]

I mean, come on.

[Seth Payne]

Still going to be with us. Pain and pender gas producing.

[Sean Pendergast]

That's huge. Yeah, yeah. It's a grind.

[Seth Payne]

It's challenging. Who makes it like this?

[Sean Pendergast]

It's a grind. You know me. Definitely me. Yeah. When. When he joined you guys in 2020. Correct.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. Yeah. I. I didn't think he'd last six

[Sean Pendergast]

months with you guys. Yeah, nobody did. Nobody did.

[Seth Payne]

There's a lot of. No, honestly, we play a lot of audio and it just doesn't sound like it. Big deal. Like, well, whatever. It's a lot of work for the producers. Like, with every clip that you add and we play like Sean and I play a lot of audio. And that's the part that you wouldn't realize. And like, and like the way our system works, like Ben's gotta a grab the audio and then shuffle it around and everything. And like, that's. That's the part of like almost like the, the manual labor part of the job. It's really, really hard that Ben does a really good job.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. Again, people don't realize how many audibles we throw at Ben. And I'm. I'm the biggest culprit in a segment, you know? And he's in there doing. So. He's in there posting the podcast.

[Seth Payne]

And then I try to help Ben out by grabbing and editing the audio myself.

[Sean Pendergast]

Right.

[Seth Payne]

But I'm like, I've got about a 25 hit rate on it, which means that Ben gets even more work on top of that when I try to help him.

[Sean Pendergast]

Now he's got to fix your problem, correct?

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, correct.

[Sean Pendergast]

So he's. He's a big jazz fan, as I've learned, and that.

[Cole Thompson]

That probably helps him out. Like, he has that in. Yeah, man.

[Sean Pendergast]

Like the Utah Jazz.

[Seth Payne]

No, no, like the musical genre jazz.

[Sean Pendergast]

I would really be. It'd be problematic if Ben was wearing his Matt Harpering jersey.

[Seth Payne]

Wait a second. What the hell? You like jazz? Why have you not jumped in whenever I give one of my horribly misinformed takes about music? Ben, he's that committed to the bit

[Cole Thompson]

of not talking about.

[Sean Pendergast]

I am intimidated by the giant former defensive line. Not in the same room.

[Seth Payne]

Only committed, like, two acts of violence and intimidation since I've been here, and they were never, never directed towards you.

[Cole Thompson]

You're famous for telling everybody to die.

[Sean Pendergast]

That's true.

[Seth Payne]

That's true. The only person I ever physically threatened was an actual boss, so why would you be worried? Yeah, why? How could the guy who actually physically threatened his own boss be any kind of a danger to his fellow employees? That's right.

[Cole Thompson]

That's right.

[Sean Pendergast]

Oh, my God. Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Oh, that's good.

[Sean Pendergast]

The court cases are going to be so good someday.

[Cole Thompson]

And a big.

[Seth Payne]

Big Cane.

[Sean Pendergast]

Big, big.

[Cole Thompson]

You fan.

[Seth Payne]

Big fan of the.

[Sean Pendergast]

You, Ben. Oh, yeah. Big hurricane. Big fan of the year. Yeah, Ben. More than a fan.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Give his credit, Ben. Are we reprising? Are we betting again this year? Are we going to bet on the game?

[Cole Thompson]

Sure.

[Sean Pendergast]

Okay.

[Cole Thompson]

Like, you guys are hanging out for that one, right?

[Sean Pendergast]

For. No, I don't watch. I don't watch Notre. Did Ben just go. You and I are similar in that respect. Yeah, I don't like. Yeah, no, we're kids. Injured spirits along that front. I don't like watching Notre Dame games out and about with people.

[Cole Thompson]

So you like staying at home?

[Sean Pendergast]

Stay at home, man. Yeah. Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Is that for the protection of the

[Sean Pendergast]

other people or for you? No, for me. Well, it's not. I just don't. I don't. I don't like people talking to me during the games. Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Last thing on Ben, when.

[Sean Pendergast]

When the Canes beat the Aggies in the college football playoff this year. He was incredibly gracious and classy and I hated him for that.

[Seth Payne]

I want to be mad.

[Sean Pendergast]

I hate him for that. Like, why are you so good about this?

[Cole Thompson]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. Are you listening to KT AM, KT FM, HD2, Houston An Odyssey sports station Cross Talk brought to you by DNM Auto Leasing. What is the we just got done talking Astros. Let me ask you guys first before the question of the day. The revised over under win total for the Astros. You may have seen this already. 79 and a half. They're on pace right now for 78 wins.

[Seth Payne]

Right.

[Sean Pendergast]

So they'd have to go, they'd have to be two games over.500 the rest of the way to finish with 80 wins over or under. I'm going to go over over 79. We all went over also. We feel like a bunch of homers.

[Seth Payne]

I'm going to go over. But I doesn't mean I think they're

[Sean Pendergast]

going to make the playoffs. Well, if something, I think they're going

[Seth Payne]

to win more than 79 games.

[Sean Pendergast]

Here's the scariest thing about going over in thinking this through is okay, people are going to hate me for this. But this is just analysis. This isn't me trying to jinx anything.

[Cole Thompson]

This is what they're going to hate you for this.

[Sean Pendergast]

If something, if something happens for any period of time to somebody whose name rhymes with schmoordon Schmalver. I didn't go full jinx right there.

[Seth Payne]

Oh, there it is.

[Sean Pendergast]

But it's in the ether anyway. And yet some of the games where they've rested in this year, they've put up like eight or nine runs. It's been kind of weird.

[Seth Payne]

Don't count on that. No, no, no, no.

[Sean Pendergast]

That's small sample size. I get that. What about you, Reggie? Yeah, I'd go over. So we're all over. I mean outside of the first like month or two where it was just

[Seth Payne]

pretty abysmal, they've played at a pretty solid pace. The problem is that they dug themselves such a hole. If they continue on the pace that

[Cole Thompson]

they've been playing on for like the last month or two. Like I feel better about what they're trying to do. What did you say, Sean? 92 game win streak. I mean pace after the first month.

[Sean Pendergast]

Since May 15th. Yeah, yeah, since May 15th. They, they, they're like 30 and 23 or something like that.

[Seth Payne]

Especially when Dana go gets that goes

[Sean Pendergast]

and gets that left handed bat in the outfield. Let's get it, you know, do it, you know, it so what is the question of the Astros related? We kept it pretty straightforward because they

[Seth Payne]

are playing baseball again. What do you have to see from them? And this can go one of either ways. And what do you have to see from them to like, give up the ghost?

[Cole Thompson]

All right.

[Sean Pendergast]

It ain't gonna happen.

[Seth Payne]

Or would make you believe.

[Sean Pendergast]

What do you have to see from the Astros? Oh, to get well health for your Don Alvarez. I just said that. I think Altuve. We. We did. We went through Matt Kalahara's question. Five big questions for the Astros. I think there's two guys that need to get back to what they've been over the last few years. You are correct. One is Jose Altuve. The other is Brian Abreu.

[Cole Thompson]

Yep.

[Seth Payne]

All right. I'm going to give you a much softer answer to this, and this is what it is. There was some kind of controversy last week. I can't even remember what it was. Where Espada kind of did his thing where he went out and had a nice casual conversation with the umpire and. Oh, I see your point of view. Okay. I want to see something. Something like in 2015 when everything genuinely turned around. You remember AJ Hinch went after Joe Girardi at home plate. When everybody's out there and AJ Hinch just started tor tearing into Joe Girardi after the game, Girardi was like, I don't know now why he was coming after me. On Joe Girardi and the Astros, they put. And they turned it around after that and then they became Yankees killers. And that was a pivoting point where like Miles. Milk toast. Milk toast. AJ Hinge became a little bit something extra. That.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah. So we're hoping that Joe Espada becomes an entirely different person.

[Cole Thompson]

Yes.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. He's gotta let the shadow the. The dark side of him come out.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yes.

[Cole Thompson]

He woke up on the wrong side of the bed for like next six, three.

[Sean Pendergast]

Yeah, we need wrong side of the bed, Joe. Yeah.

[Seth Payne]

Because we've seen the spotted get a little miffed.

[Cole Thompson]

But it happens after like a period

[Sean Pendergast]

of time of people getting on his case.

[Cole Thompson]

And even that.

[Seth Payne]

That is like he's.

[Sean Pendergast]

He.

[Seth Payne]

He looks you a little sideways.

[Sean Pendergast]

Like I don't know that he's kicking

[Seth Payne]

up dirt at folks.

[Cole Thompson]

Mine is a little bit more out there because of. I think that they are going to add in a left handed bat and it's going to be in the outfield. I got to see someone else step on up consistently. Because just because you add in a left handed bat, I still got Jake Myers. I still Got Taylor Tramell. I still got Cam Smith. Not delivered on his end of the bargain. Someone else in that outfield, whoever's sitting in the 7, 8, 9 hole, has got to give me a little bit more.

[Sean Pendergast]

Mine is Christian Walker. He's been getting such a pass because we're talking about the outfield, and we're

[Seth Payne]

talking about the bottom of the order and. And Imai and all this.

[Sean Pendergast]

He's played awful. Yeah, he's. And. And he's who you count on behind those big guys.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, that's where, you know, it was depressing. We were doing something yesterday about, like, the. Or maybe it's when Sean was out, about, like, the. The role. Oh, yeah. Luke Morrow came up. If we gave out superlatives right now for the Astros, like, iron. The roller coaster award, I wanted to give it to Walker, and then I looked at his splits, and I was like, oh, no. It's just been a steady decline.

[Sean Pendergast]

It's one of those slides that you slide down on a blanket.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah. It was more of a water slide than a roller coaster.

[Cole Thompson]

Just a little bit off the ground.

[Seth Payne]

But if it wasn't for the start

[Sean Pendergast]

of the season, it would have been like. Like an airport escalator walkway. It would have been one of those things. I always think this. I always think it's. Man, it's way better to get off to a good start.

[Cole Thompson]

Yeah.

[Sean Pendergast]

Like the first impression you make out of the shoot, because then the season gets going and it gets a little chaotic, and people like, I. It took a while for me to notice, like, how bad Christian Walker had been.

[Seth Payne]

And you're counting on him because he's like, it's one thing to project, but

[Sean Pendergast]

you're counting on that guy, and it's not happening.

[Seth Payne]

You know what. You know what his batting average is

[Sean Pendergast]

over the last 28 days just to

[Cole Thompson]

kick him in the jungle.

[Sean Pendergast]

Do I want to know? You don't, but I'm going to tell you anyway. Damn it.

[Seth Payne]

Good old.205 batting average over the last.

[Cole Thompson]

What's the. The OPS? 650, baby. Not even worse.

[Sean Pendergast]

650.

[Cole Thompson]

Not an elite average hitter at this point.

[Seth Payne]

You guys brought up the. The. The one time Espada got surly this year was it when Chandler Rome asked him if Ryan Weiss might go down to the Miners, and Espada acted like, don't try to play gm. And then, like, three hours later, Ryan went, that looks great. That was great.

[Sean Pendergast]

That's right, though.

[Seth Payne]

Spotter usually goes out there and says,

[Sean Pendergast]

you know, I never thought of it like that. He's a real level head. He said. Now that you mentioned it, I didn't see it that way.

[Seth Payne]

Yeah, fair enough.

[Sean Pendergast]

Fair enough.

[Seth Payne]

You do have a better view of the plane than I do. Okay.

[Sean Pendergast]

All right, boys. Well, have a great show.

[Cole Thompson]

Thanks, buddy.

[Sean Pendergast]

You got it. Crosstalk Brought to you by DNM Auto Leasing. Cool. Enjoyed it the last couple of days. We'll see you on Monday, my friend.

[Cole Thompson]

See you Monday, man.

[Sean Pendergast]

Antibodies to you, Seth C. Pain.

[Seth Payne]

Oh, yeah. The antibodies. And you can go die along with Joe Girardi.

[Sean Pendergast]

I'll take it. I'll take it. On Hotkey Friday. I'll take it. Yes.

[Seth Payne]

All right, we're done. Not current Joe Girardi, but, you know, 2015 Joe Girardi.

[Sean Pendergast]

That one. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we're done. We're out of time.

[Cole Thompson]

I'm Jenna Fisher.

[Seth Payne]

And I'm Angela Kinsey.

[Sean Pendergast]

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.