Are Astros racing towards postseason or offseason?

Are Astros racing towards postseason or offseason?

Welcome into a special live Stone Cold Stros. I’m Brandon Strange with Charlie Polo and Josh Jordan. Go follow both of them on X at Palo and Josh Jordan 975. On today’s episode, the Astros are gasping towards the finish line. They have done enough to be mathematically still in it, but they need some help to eek into the postseason. We’ll discuss how they got here, what they’ll need to do to extend their playoff streak or playoff appearance streak, and weigh in on one hot but top hot button topic in particular. Before all that, hit like on the video, subscribe to the channel, click the bell for notifications. We’re on all your favorite podcast apps as well, where you can listen to the episodes. Just search Stone Cold Stros. Also worth noting, uh, I saw a comment in our last video that said they were going to miss us during the offseason. I appreciate that, but we’re not going anywhere. Uh our intention is to keep doing weekly episodes as best we can and we’ll do emergency episodes as breaking news happens. Uh but there’s still more games left to be played this season. So let’s get to that. Charlie Josh, welcome in. Um coming out of the Mariner series, look, things looked grim, but Houston still was in somewhat control of their destiny. But as has been the case all season long, their offense just continues to be bipolar. uh scoring just one run over their first two games in Sacramento before exploding for 11 in the finale. Before we go big picture, let’s start with a postmortem of the A series. Uh Charlie, what were your takeaways? Two games of utter impotence offensively, which if in the end the Astros are going to miss the playoffs was appropriate that it was the foremost element of their demise the final week. Right. The A’s pitching staff is not good. Luis Severino’s earned run average at home for the season was 651 before he just absolutely dominated the Astros in his start. So, as you mentioned, a big one. And then Hunter Brown on the mound, which meant it was more than 50/50. They’d score zero. Four of Hunter Brown’s last seven starts. The Astros were shut out. Another one they scored one run. So, the Ace could sue for non-support. bad offense, bad two out of three, which got them to 81 games. So, if they go score 15 runs in each game in Anaheim against the Angels, the Astros will finish with fully half their games this season, 81 times. They scored three or fewer runs all last season, just 67 times. And earlier in the year, credit for pulling it off as often as they did, but it was luck. It was the randomness of these things that they somehow were 19 and 27 at one point, which is an unbelievably awesome record when scoring three or fewer runs. Well, since then in games scoring three and fewer runs, three and 32, because the pitching faded badly over the second half of the season, the offense didn’t fade badly. It was never good over a long haul stretch of the season, including when they went 29 and 10. It was magnificent pitching that carried that stretch. No doubt. I mean, it’s hard to win a series when you only score one run in the first two games of the series. So, same old stuff. And what’s even more disappointing is in the the final two games against the Mariners with their terrific pitching, you managed to get four runs and three runs, but you go against the A’s and you can only get one run over those first two. And then kind of felt like a getaway day for the A’s. Their season’s already over. This was the finale of the series. This feels like how the Astros just kind of rolled it out during the regular season on a lot of those, you know, day game after night game finales where you saw a lineup where you’re like, Espata thinks they can win with this line item. But anyway, doesn’t matter. Astros needed to get it together, get it done and it it didn’t happen clearly. So now things get really difficult. But they had a lot of opportunities, guys. It’s just it’s not happening and the injuries and it’s and it’s the same guys letting you down. And I know they blew up and had a big game in the finale, but too little too late, I think, in my opinion. Yeah, the game one we we saw the old bugaboo of the bases loaded. You and you score one run. I mean, just how many times? I don’t really even want to know that. It seems like if you told me 200 times, I’ I’d say that sounds right. Uh it’s it’s just been a lot of as you said the same old suspects and some of those suspects came over in trade. Uh one of those being Jesus Sanchez which his game two of this series was just I mean not that he did anything in game one but the bobbling and gaffs in the outfield were just atrocious. Look I channel room was asked on Thursday uh when Jesus Sanchez got lifted for Cam Smith. He was asked on X, “Is the experiment is the Jesus Sanchez experiment over which over with?” To which Chandler replied, “It’s reaching a point where they may not be able to afford to play him in any capacity.” Now, Sanchez wasn’t a great hitter before joining Houston, but he’s been an absolute disaster since arriving, and I think it’s clearly in his head, as seen by the fielding gaffs. Um, when Dana Brown traded for him, he said they were going to work with him to lift the ball more, try to maximize home runs, and now we see him swing wildly, uh, these uppercut swings at pitches. So, I want to ask you guys, how much of this do you feel like is his regression is him trying to tweak mechanics midway through the season? And how much is this just maybe a player cracking under the pressure of actually having to play some games that matter? I do think when it goes bad, it can go worse. The old Yogi Bear quote, 90% of this game is half mental. Jesus Sanchez looked like a mental case on the field. He could not get wrong, right? I think it was last week I said rather than a baseball glove, it sometimes looks like he’s wearing an oven mitt and then he has the game that you referenced where my god is the ball greased when it goes to Jesus Sanchez. Uh sub 200 batting average, sub600 OPS. Hey, at the point of acquisition, that was a solid get. Ryan Gusto was not a devastating loss to the Astros rotation. Sanchez was an over 800 OPS guy against right-handed pitching, right? The Astros with no left-handed hitters of any consequence at all in Yordon’s absence. So, good intentions, solid acquisition, epic failure, and you use the word or borrowed the word Brandon, afford uh Jesus Sanchez under team control, which looked promising for next year. I think they’re going to dump him rather than pay him an arbitration salary of 67 million, which in part is the Astros economic situation, their budgetary issues if they’re going to play the CBT dance in the off season again. And they’re probably overreacting to 15 20 good at bats from Zack Cole, who already is showing the big strikeout problems that he’s had throughout his minor league career. The raw power, awesome. The 249 career minor league hitter. So just to say, “Oh, look at this young guy. also not that young as prospects go, 25 years old. So cruy ironic that they get Sanchez hoping to get him to elevate the ball more and maximize the natural power that he has. Uh hello everyone, my name is Cam Smith. Big problems elevating the ball, all his raw power. Goes 150 at bats without a home run. Only nine home runs for the season. But Cam Smith’s 22 years old. He’s now 27 years old and he was not acquired to fortify the lineup mid-season. So, while it’s a colossal failure in how it’s played out, Dana Brown did not make a stupid trade in acquiring Jesus Sanchez. But I think his overall Astros tenure, don’t blink this weekend or you’ll miss the rest of it. Yeah, I think the only thing if we’re kind of looking back, you know, Dana did trade away a starting pitcher and I know he hasn’t been very good since he went over to the Marlins, but now that we know how many injuries they have and we have Jason Alexander pitching the game tomorrow or gets the Angels in the the opener there. So, I I know he hadn’t been very good, but you did trade away something where we were all saying, “Do they need to add pitching? Do they need to add pitching?” But, you know, hindsight 2020 to me it’s more about maybe Maybe it is the tweaking of the mechanics. Do you guys remember the opener of the A series? How many popups did the Astros hit in that game? There must be something to where they’re trying to really get these guys to elevate the ball and clearly it’s not working because they’ll go out there and swing at the first pitch or two and pop up to the shortstop. They they do it all the time. So, I think there’s something to it. But, we have to look at the drastic difference going into today’s game. Sanchez’s numbers with the Marlins 256 batting average. With the Astros, 194. His OPS has slipped from 740 to 599. I mean, that is just a massive difference. But it’s not just him, guy. This is over like 45 games, too. This isn’t a tiny sample size. But it’s not just him. This is a this is something with the organization because we see it with Christian Walker. His OPS last year 803 this year going into the game 695. And even Aras, his batting average has dropped from about 250 to 232. It’s across the board. Korea, we talked about it last week. Korea is really the only one that’s shown some improvement coming back to the Astros or coming over to the Astros. So, yeah, especially if they missed the playoffs, this has to be addressed. And I know everybody gets upset like, oh, the Astros hitting coaches showed up for the finale against the A’s. It may not be them, but there’s something going on to where all these guys come over here and they don’t perform to the level they played uh with other ball clubs. And yet with pitching, guys usually improve when they come here. They need to take a hard look at why that is. Well, let’s remember that Kareah has been better with the Astros than he was with the Twins. He was terrible with the Twins, right? At the point of the acquisitions, Kareah had the worst statistics among him, Urias, and Sanchez. So, he almost had no place to go but up. And he’s been all right, but his biggest stretch of damage was the first nine games. since then, which is about 40 games. His OPS is right about 700, which is the mediocre line or slightly below. Uh Altuve, you know, he’s not going to wind up a 300 career hitter. He’s in the 260s, 265 going into the the Angel series. And he’s not a high walk guy to be batting first or third almost every game is on base percentage in the 320s. That’s not what you want from a table setter. And anytime this subject comes up, piñata swinger Yiner Diaz, he’s sitting on 20 walks in way over 500 plate appearances with three games to go in the season. 20 on base percentage, about 280. That’s a joke. He’s drawn one walk in his last 85 at bats. That’s a joke. You don’t get traffic on the bases. You better hit with a lot of power. You’re not going to string together three, four hits at a time. The Astros have been a poor power team. It’s just been a well-rounded offense. A well-rounded bad offense. Decent batting average, but on base percentage, no slugging percentage. So, no. And the big one, scoring runs, no. Bottom third of the league virtually the entire season. And the offense sucked. Is probably the lead line on the epitap if they indeed missed the postseason. Yeah. And we remember Jeremy Pñena, he had issues lifting the ball for multiple seasons and his breakthrough season came after he gave credit to Carlos Koreah working with him in the offseason. And speaking of Koreah, I know a 700 ops may not be impressive, but he’s hitting doubles. You know, one of the few consistent producers at the bat. I know that the bar is not high, but they’ve quite frankly needed every bit of production that he’s been able to give them. uh one of the few acquisitions that actually worked out well. Um and think I mean per how much credit should Eso Paredes get being able to produce on one leg the way he is? I he’s producing better on one leg than most of those guys are producing with a a an abled body. Um you know there’s there’s a big debate. Uh, well, before I get to the debate though, I do I I do want to say Charlie, it’s interesting. You know, you said that Sanchez was a solid acquisition at the time that just didn’t work out. We said the same thing about Christian Walker, you know, when we got him was like, okay, that’s that’s a pretty good get. And then just for him to just spiral. So, it does beg the question and that’s where I want to get into the debate because there’s a big debate on social media right now among fans right now whether the faltering uh at the end of the season is due to the abundance of injuries. While some many have taken aim acutely at the compounding organizational failures, those decisions that didn’t go right. Now, we know the answer lies somewhere in the middle, but um I I don’t think it’s perfectly in the middle. So if there’s if it’s a spectrum of blame like a fuel meter, um does the needle tilt more towards the expansive roster of guys sitting on the IIL or more towards the culmination of front office decision-m that finds Houston fighting for a wild card birth. Yordon playing fewer than 50 games, an absolutely massive blow. On the pitching side, the sheer volume of injuries was incredible. But the Astros don’t hold the patent on that. And as I talked about earlier in the week, go look at how many pitching staffs had their top two starters healthy the entire season. Hunter Brown, Fra Valdez, 31 starts a piece they never missed. Just take the Dodgers as an example, 12th division title in 13 years. Blake Snell about 10 starts. Tyler Glassnau missed two months. Otani didn’t pitch until the last two months. The big acquisition, Roki Suzaki’s hardly pitched for them. Kershaw didn’t start his season till basically the the All-Star break. And we can take other teams. The other day mentioned Garrett Cole hasn’t thrown a pitch for the Yankees. Look at the Rangers staff. Um the loss of hater absolutely trickle down. The depth factor in the bullpen. But you know what? Abrau blew that game in Toronto. That’s the only other game all year other than the one hater gave up that the Astros lost when they took a lead to the ninth inning. Um they just haven’t been good enough. The offense has not been good enough. Yordon Alvarez obviously is a premier player, but it shouldn’t buckle the whole offense. The cumulative toll, you know, that Kyle Tucker guy pretty good, even missing a third of last season. Compare his output to the combined putrid output of Cam Smith with his complete collapse the last three months not even hitting 150. Cooper Hmel, Taylor Trmell, Jacob Melton at bats for Mauricio Dubon and I feel like I’m forgetting at least one other guy who doesn’t really belong in a major league lineup. Certainly not getting a 100 plus play appearances. And then Yiner Diaz becoming a bad offensive player this season. You referenced Christian Walker, a huge disappointment. Uh the loss of Paris, sure, substantial. Well, Alex Bregman missed about the same time for the Red Sox. Bregman, by the way, hitting about 180 the last 30 games for Boston. Um but the Astros just decrepit farm system that they really had no one warranting call up. I mean, Bryce Matthews had two really good games in Arizona. That’s it. Zack Cole out of utter desperation gets a call up. Has the monster game in Atlanta, but you’re just throwing darts and hoping you find the board when you’re making moves like those. I mean, in game 159, the finale, and hey, they scored 11 runs. Fran Valdez re-entered the uh ranks of the competent. But in game 159, Joe Espatada puts Trel and Urias in the lineup out of utter desperation andor despair. Um that it worked out. Didn’t mean it was managerial genius, but he’s like, “What else can I try?” It’s true and you’re right, Charlie, about having Hunter and Frober all year and how that’s, you know, a benefit obviously for the Astros, but who’s been in FromB’s body for August and SE or September? Yeah, August and September. He hadn’t pitched like Frober. He’s pitched like a guy that you just pulled up out of the Miners for the past couple months. I know he had the good outing in the finale, but overall, they have just not been able to win ball games with him on the mound for the past two months. That has absolutely killed you because that’s something that you were counting on. and Jason Alexander is your third starter and Christian Javier is a coin flip whether he’s going to have a good game or not. They’re just they’re in a tough spot and I I don’t know. I don’t know who you want to blame it on or what have you, but they just they’ve been a different team basically in the second half and a lot of its injuries. We can’t get around that. You lose Pettis for that big a chunk of time. Yordon and then Pñena your most important games of the season. You don’t have Jeremy Pñena. He’s been your best player is especially your best all-around player defense and speed and all that kind of stuff. So, and we talked about this in the last video. We’re like, Pena’s not sitting against, you know, the Mariners unless there’s something to this injury. And here we are. We haven’t seen him again. So, that’s concerning. I He’s not back for the the final series of the season. They’re they’re in some serious trouble. They already are, but they’re it’s even worse. When you’re running Dubon out there, who whoever, it’s rough to it’s really hard to score runs, guys. So, please pay you get healthy, get some treatment, find a way back. Well, I mean, you know how tricky obliques are. I mean, he could go up there and swing and then they’d be in real trouble. He could be out some real time and not have any even if there’s any chance of of them making the postseason. If Andrew Brown said it was a day or two, no problem. Yeah. I mean, he needs to stop doing that. He just makes himself look desperately dopily optimistic, dishonest, or clueless. Yeah. And that’s that’s really the the part of trying to figure out which way that needle’s really facing because I I think when we talk about it, you know, Charlie, you make all the good points to point towards organizational missteps. And I think there’s plenty of those that go around. I think you know uh even up to the trade deadline where kind of evaluating what needs are and what you’re willing to pay or or not pay uh you know the the they put they shoved for offense which was certainly a need but really didn’t get anything other than a a Korea that’s produced more than you could have anticipated. Uh and Sanchez was maybe the right move but it just didn’t work out. And Charlie, you say all the time, it’s a resultsoriented business. So regardless of whether it was the right the right move at the time, it didn’t work. And so now you’re at a place to where organizational control of this guy doesn’t even matter. You’re you’re ready to let him walk. And it’s not like you’ve got a whole bunch of outfielders that are, you know, pushing their way, you know, fighting for roster spots. So he he’s quickly become just another version of Chaz McCormick on this team, you know, and I think the guy I left out earlier. They threw a couple hundred plate appearances, 150 plate appearances on him. One other thing, guys, that we should include on this, there is an element of life cycle, right? A hellaciously awesome 8 nyear stretch. And it’s not like they turned into the Pirates or had a season like the Minnesota Twins. Uh, and there are exceptions, right? The Yankees 33 straight winning seasons. Mentioned the Dodgers 12th division title in 13 years. Hey, the tiny market Milwaukee Brewers are going to the playoffs for the seventh time in eight years. But the San Francisco Giants won three World Series in five years, 2010, 2012, 2014. What have they done since? The Phillies have been a playoff perennial for a few years. Well, where were they for a few years between the Ryan Howard, Chase Utley, Jimmy Rollins teams, the late 2000, the the uh and five, six years ago, right? the Mets large market team hadn’t been heard from for most of a decade until the last couple of years. So there is an element of the folks get spoiled but when Jim Crane the window will always be open under my leadership and the farm systems in such sad shape and the major league team now is just a halfway decent team. I mean, 30 and 39 over their last 69 games isn’t even decent, but you add it all up, 85 and 74 isn’t tragic, but it’s closer to straight up mediocre than it is to elite. Yeah. And it it raises, you know, part of this debate online is people saying, well, you don’t need wholesale changes. You just need your team to be healthy. But that’s a fool’s errand because it’s sports. Guys are going to get hurt. So, you have to be able to anticipate some sort of of of loss for injury. Now, granted, not to the scale and depths of what we’ve seen out of the 2025 Astros, but you have to have organizational depth to be able to absorb some of those losses, and they just don’t have any. They just don’t have the depth. And hoping for health is not a good organizational plan. But it may be their their best plan at this point considering where they’re at from a financial standpoint and from a farm system standpoint, which I mean, I know it’s asking a lot for Dana Brown to show up and then fix things miraculously, but the farm system really doesn’t look like it has a whole bunch of like stars that are developing in there. Like, so it’s not like the the only way that you really turn a farm system around quickly is you got to sell. You got to sell. You gota you got to trade players and then be able to I mean you got to draft well obviously but you also have to be able to if you’re selling then you’re getting loads of prospects back that you hope develop into you know the next Jeremy Pñes or the next Carlos Kareahas or or uh hopefully there’s a first baseman in there somewhere. Um but you know someone who can play a a competent outfield that can actually like bring some power. I mean, obviously, Meyers has done well from a batting average standpoint, but from a power standpoint, he’s just it’s just non-existent. He’s But it’s not even on him. It’s not even on him. Like, he’s he’s done well. He’s not the problem. Um, you know, and that kind of makes me want So, yeah, given the adversity that Houston’s faced and all those injuries that we talked about, you know, look, they’re the Astros, like we said, are still mathematically in it. Um, and you know, we can preview the series, but I just like looking at where they’re at right now, is it a credit? Can you say that it’s a credit to Houston’s resilience that they’re actually still in a position to where they can sneak into that last card wild card spot or is that a failure that they’re having to rely on sneaking into a last wild card spot given that they had built this lead, but they just weren’t able to hold it? To me, I’m going to go to the failure just because of the way you performed against the Seattle Mariners and then how you performed against the Oakland A’s or the A’s, whatever you want to call them. These were the most important games and they for the most part just didn’t show up. The offense couldn’t get a spark. And look, of course, the injuries matter. I just talked about Pñena not being here and and Gordon going down. Even though you have Pretty’s playing on one leg right now. I know it’s not all there right now, but we thought it was possible that they could at least win a game or two in the Mariners series and it’s just they underperform. That’s the bottom line. You can’t play that poorly in your last 10 games of the season when it’s that close and expect to to move on. It’s it’s unfortunate. But they do have some good players on this team, guys. Kareah and Altuve and Christian Walker has shown that he can be really good. He was last year, but they didn’t show it at the end of the year. And some of these guys, they didn’t show it over the entire season. And I’ll go back to what Charlie said about Yiner Diaz. I mean, you got Keratini hitting cleanup in the biggest game of the year. And Yiner Diaz on the bench. I mean, that’s where they are right now because Yiner is one of those guys. He’s just swings so wildly. It’s getting him on base is is tough because pitchers know. So, it’s across the board with this team. A lot of these guys regressed. Yeah, Altuve turns 36 in May and Hilly was not a good player this season. He was in there every day so he could rack up counting numbers, but when you you look at the OPS, I mean, this is his worst season without argument other than the short COVID season that was a mess going all the way back to before Jose became a good player. You know, we’re talking all the way back to 2014. Uh he doesn’t project to improve much in his late 30s. And that’s talking about his work in the batters box before we get to defense and base running. I mean, Kareah is all right. He just turned 31. And Kareah has had four good seasons and four seasons in the last eight. That’s $47 million per year on the Astros books the next three years. And then another fourth year of 25 million more for Altuve when he’s 39 years old. That is financially complicating unless you’re just going to say damn the torpedoes and the budget full speed ahead. Uh I’m with Josh. Past fail course it’s a fail. I’m not sure you should get credit for the quote where where it originated. The standard is the standard and all that the Astros have done 2017 through 2024. Last year the run of ALCS appearances ended but a division title before the Tigers dusted them in two games. Right. This is another year uh of regression unless all the tumblers click into place through the weekend. And you know what? If they get into two out of three, they have a shot because anybody has a shot against anybody else in in a two out of three. Especially if somehow they stumble into getting there and they don’t use Hunter Brown on three days rest Sunday and he’s ready to go and in game one in a two out of three. I think you you’d roll with that happily. Um if you’re the Astros, uh they had a sevengame lead in July. I mean, there was all kinds of understandable tittering around here about the Mariners choking and giving it up and how they had a 10game lead in June. Well, the Astros didn’t have a 10-ame lead, but they had that lead the next month of seven games. And they weren’t in the race with the Mariners going into the final week of the season after the Mariners came in here and clubbed them like baby seals. Sorry, Greenpeace. Um, so if they’re not in the playoffs, the season’s a failure. And I think from Jim Crane on down within the Astros organization, they’d agree with that failure, not tragedy. Uh not that they’re bottom of the barrel and they’re doomed for the next 5 years, but they could be in a very tough spot because the Mariners organization’s just in way better shape. Big league talent. Farm systems in utter mismatch in the Mariners favor. and Seattle going into the postseason. If they make a run and their ownership is emboldened and they’re getting this additional playoff revenue and they’re projecting their attendance to jump a half million and wow, our revenues could be up 40 $50 million next year. You know what? We’re going to keep Josh Naylor. I’d let Suarez walk, but they go out get another third baseman and choose to fortify their team spending more money. Um, the Mariners could own this division for a while the way the Astros did most of the last decade. And quickly, I just wanted to address something in the comments. They’re like, “What? Walk? Christian Walker is good.” I’m saying he was good last season, good enough to get a huge contract and for most of us to be pretty excited about it when the season was starting. He has regressed. That’s my point. Most of these guys have just not performed this year up to their abilities. Yeah. And when maybe when Jim Crane says the window will always be o open under his watch, maybe that means he’ll sell the team. But be careful what you wish for. four World Series appearances, two rings. Now, Mario in the comment says it should have been four rings. I say three. I don’t know that 2021 would they had the pitching uh to to seal the deal there. Um he Mario also comments because he’s been prolific in the comments here. He says, “Aspada isn’t good.” And I know that Joe’s been taking it on the chin for especially this last final two months. I don’t know who you want him to play. There aren’t a lot of good options. It’s wild that when you think about it, a month ago we were talking about or probably a month and a half ago we were talking about Aspatada and AJ Hinch being one two for manager of the year in the AL and then both of their teams have just spiraled mightily in the final month. Um I guess uh final thoughts on this upcoming series before we’re out the door. Well, I guess for those who don’t uh want to get a headache from doing the numbers, it’s actually not that complicated. Uh the Astros sweep. They need the Tigers and Guardians to lose two out of three this weekend. The Tigers are at the Red Sox. So the Red Sox would need to get swept or they close out the Astros. Everybody owns the tiebreaker over the Astros. So they need to sweep to have any sort of realistic shot. But if the Astros go two and one to get to 87 wins, if the Red Sox sweep the Tigers and the Texas Rangers with nothing to play for, Deg Grom will not pitch in a series. But if the Rangers sweep the Cleveland Guardians, that is the way the Astros could get into the postseason if they only take two out of three. In Anaheim, the Angels will be without probably their best all-around player, Zach Neto, their shortstop, their Pñena. He’s out injured. You say Kikuchi. I mean, not that he’s Sai Young, but solid. He will not pitch in the series against the Astros. Uh, but if they sweep, they need the Red Sox to take two out of three from Detroit and the Rangers to take two out of three from Cleveland or it’s Night. Yeah, it’s it’s not looking good obviously, guys. And you know, I think back too with Pñena, if he doesn’t hit that grand slam against the Mariners, like that game’s not even close. So, it’s going to be tricky. They need a lot of help here. And I think, you know, guy, I’m a vibes guy, right? And that just the vibes of when you lose Yordon and after the Mariners series, you lose Pñena and then in the first game against the A’s, that little pop fly that got dropped up in the infield in the first inning with with Javier on the mound and Christian Walker not seeing it and the lights and Kareah’s trying to run over there and catch the ball and Javier’s in his way. That just kind of told me, man, it doesn’t feel like their year when when you’re you’re dropping popups in the infield in a must-win game. It that that just doesn’t look like a team that’s about to go on a run. I hope I’m wrong, but that’s just those are the vibes I’m feeling, guys. Starting pitchers, the final series of the season. Jason Alexander, probably AJ Bla on Saturday or an opener and then AJ Blubla and Christian Javier doesn’t inspire a whole bunch of confidence, but the Angels stink. They’re playing out the string. And in the three-game series, garbage can beat Elite three times. 2019, Cole Verlander. Verlander Cole best one-two tandem in the game. Cincinnati Reds were terrible. The Astros would win 107 games that season. The lowly Reds swept the Astros in a three-game series in which Verlander and Cole started two of the three games. Anything is possible, including the Astros being eliminated before it even gets to Sunday. Well, after they lost the second game of the A series, I tweeted out that the Astros golden era had concluded. And I can’t say definitively that’s for sure. But regardless of how this week, the rest of this week plays off plays out. Uh it’s worth reiterating that this has been a fun ride. It has been an amazing ride for this team uh to be as good as they’ve been for as long as they’ve been. And I’m not sure if an overhaul is coming or necessary, but it sure feels like a team that needs some changes and some very strategic parts. And I think, you know, the formula, it sure seems like the formula up to this point has been to just keep filling around what was left of the championship team. That tech ain’t going to cut it anymore. One last reminder, if you’re watching on YouTube, be sure to click like on the video. And if you listen on podcast on apps like Apple or Spotify, give us a fivestar rating while you’re here. Uh appreciate everyone for joining us for this EV this live episode. I’m Brandon for Josh and Charlie. So long. Have a great weekend. Go Astros.

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