Speaker 1: I would imagine, Oh, look at you making a managerial decisions.
Speaker 2: Oh never, I didn't say that. You hear that, Joe.
Let's get on all right, we're done with the news
at new Yeah we can. We can fade this down, Nicholas.
Speaker 1: We're gonna let We're gonna let Jill make the news
at noon.
Speaker 2: I walked in at the right time. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Now, we're not gonna talk about that at all, no questions.
Speaker 1: We make lots of money and making these kind of
analysis lots of I make a lot of.
Speaker 3: I don't make anything. Yeah, he makes more. That's why
he makes the actual correct decisions.
Speaker 2: You got a big night ahead of you, by the way.
Speaker 4: I know, I know. I was wondering where they want
to set up at. There's a lot of people coming.
Speaker 2: It's a big dinner run by the governor. I know.
But where is it? I don't know. I didn't plan that.
You gotta dress up for that bad boy.
Speaker 4: You got a tucks or what's Oh yeah, I got
a little dress code. Yeah, bring it with you or
I got it. I got it, I got it, I
like it.
Speaker 2: I got the governor.
Speaker 4: We got Uh, it's you have to speak at all. No,
I don't think, so get to hang out with some
cool players.
Speaker 2: Ye, Molina, that's going to be here, Is that right? Yeah?
I heard. I think Barry Larking is going to be here.
Speaker 1: One of the greatest reds of them all.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I'm gonna go out there with some few pearls. See,
I guess a few autographs.
Speaker 1: The reason why we know this is because we, uh
mctagger and I invited Joe watch Base Rockets with in
the Rockets cousin game tonight.
Speaker 2: What time? What time? That game starts?
Speaker 1: Nine o'clock?
Speaker 2: Well the thing ends at eight? See where where were
we're going to meet up? Where are we going? Uh,
we're gonna be over dressed.
Speaker 1: You're gonna go int the duffies in the suit to
see that for sure?
Speaker 2: Duffies? Which duffies you guys do? I don't know. He's
his decision, not mine.
Speaker 3: Brian mctager's running the local fan club.
Speaker 2: We're going to eat steak first, so oh you guys
are yeah?
Speaker 3: Oh I forgot about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I might need to dress up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I probably like this right If we talked to
the manager place, yeah, we should, all right, So we
asked forty questions of you a few weeks ago, and
we're gonna try some forty new one. All right, ready,
here here's what I get. Here's a crazy take. We
had your space cowboy pitching staff could be the filthiest
and Triple A baseball.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's the whole idea behind it.
Speaker 4: Create a create a line of defense if something happens
at the majorlegue level, these guys can come up and perform.
We added a ton of good picture even the guys
from n I. They're good arms, some of them major
league service. And that was the whole idea behind it.
Do you feel like you've got to set a date
in your mind?
Speaker 1: You know, publicly say it, but in your mind, I
want to have my rotation set by a certain time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you do.
Speaker 4: I think for that last week of spring training, you
do have a pretty good idea of how your rotation
is going to look like, and you start lining them
up so you know who you're going to how you're
going to you know, line them up not only for
that first series but against the Red Sox. Right, and
then there's an off day and then we do have
a stretch of games, so we're going to be facing
the Mariners, so we want to make sure that we
line up certain pitchers to face certain some of those teams.
I think the biggest question is going to be more
the middle of that bullpen, some of the long guys,
some of those that's where we're going to be spending
most of our time.
Speaker 1: So if you don't use your starters a lot during
spring training because you they don't need to be burning, right,
how do you do how do you get those middle
guys in when everybody needs to getting anything?
Speaker 4: But but there there's plenty, There's plenty of innings, you know,
even the starters. You you know, you at some point
you get him throwing sixty eighty pitches, and but there's
plenty of stuff that we do in the backfield. You know,
we do want to get them facing guys on the
on the main field, but we could create some some
live vps and and try to get them built up
that way.
Speaker 2: But you know, you have to be creative.
Speaker 4: You just don't have enough innings here sometimes to answer
some of those all those questions.
Speaker 3: Sticking with the pitching, Christian Xavier is an interesting one
to me.
Speaker 2: How what do you see from him where he is now?
Speaker 3: And how do you get him back to the guy
that we know that can can be somebody that can
go out there and throw a bunch of no hit innings.
Speaker 2: We've seen from them.
Speaker 4: You know, Historically pitchers who come back from Tommy John,
they usually come back and happens what happens to Heavier.
Towards the end, you start seeing you know, his stuff
trying to come around, and he has some decent outings.
But then once they have a full off season of
you know, full strength live BPS he was in the
dr throwing bullpens up to forty pitches.
Speaker 2: Now you see some health.
Speaker 4: Now you can start you know, planning ahead, and you
start seeing a good version of him again. He's going
to be big for us. He's going to be really
big for us. We get that Christian heavier, which I
know is in there, that twenty twenty two Christian heavier.
Speaker 2: Watch out.
Speaker 1: We had Spencer Getty about twenty minutes ago.
Speaker 2: What what's Spencer?
Speaker 1: It's going to show up?
Speaker 2: You think, you hope I should say yeah.
Speaker 4: And again you know I think Spencer year after that
injury and the post there in the middle just kind
of you know, you know, makes up.
Speaker 2: He's messed up his rhythm. And and and it.
Speaker 4: Sucked because we had high expectations for him. We really
like this stuff, and once he gets going, he's he
could be pretty dominant. But I expect him to come
in and and and and be good. His stuff is
so good he could create swing and missus looking for
guys that can take us deep into the game. Man,
that's gonna be that's gonna be key for us.
Speaker 1: We have discussed about the six man rotation because you've
got plenty of arms in the schedules certainly would dictate that, right.
Is is it harder to give those guys an extra
day when they're feeling good and feeling like they can
go over there because it throws the rory them off?
Or is it harder because you have to know you've
got one less mental reliever if.
Speaker 2: A guy is a tough day.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so yeah, let's tackle that one first. Anytime you
have a six man rotation, that is one less guy
in the pen.
Speaker 2: So any hiccup from your starters.
Speaker 4: Now you start, you know, asking some of your high
leverage relievers just throwing in down games and stuff like that.
So you're trying to avoid those those those things. Uh,
but you do your six man rotations for at the end,
you know, June July and you start getting into August.
You want those arms to be fresh, so you are
proactive in the front end. Try to be smart about
it and be patient about it, because you know, in
August September comes around, you're unleashing them and you asking
them to throw getting to the one oh five, one
ten right like we did a few times to huntor
last year.
Speaker 2: So it's tricky.
Speaker 4: You just got to be patient and and and that's
why bringing all these arms is important so we can
so we feel good about our about our depth.
Speaker 3: Astro's manager Joe spottles hear on Sports Talk seven ninety
I'm not gonna ask you who's playing were, but just
at a general humans standpoint, you know, you as a manager,
you have many different roles. You have to be psychologists,
you have to build relationships, you have to talk to
all these guys. What is that challenge like for you
trying to just because everybody wants to play every day,
which is a great thing and great and so competitive, yes, yes,
but then try to figure out a way to kind
of figure this thing out with the personal, with the
human element of it.
Speaker 2: Man, I tell you the toughest part of my job. Right.
Speaker 4: We have a super competitive group of players who want
to play every day, And if there were not like that,
then I'll be scratching my head like, what the heck,
what's wrong with this guys?
Speaker 2: Right, But they're not like that. They all want to
play every day.
Speaker 4: They'll every day players, right, And I've learned that even
working on some great managers, sometimes you're gonna have tough
conversation with players and they're not gonna like what you say, right,
And there's a level of respect there that ultimately I'll
make that decisions and I understand that they're not gonna
like it, but we have to do what's best for
the team. So if if they all understand that we're
doing this was best for the team, our players knowing that, listen,
I am doing it for we'st best for the players,
it's not personally just best for for the team. And
it's it's tricky. It's difficult, especially when you when you
have a ton of dudes. I just want to go
out there and and and and and ball and play
good and and the good players all Stars, Silver Sloggers,
Gold Glovers, Hall of Famers, Hall of Fame Hall of Famers.
Speaker 2: There you go shooting Hall of famers, Yes, exactly, you
know we got them all.
Speaker 1: Uh so, Zach Cole is going to have every opportunity
to win that left field spot for you. You got jenk
and center camp corner outfield spots supposed to be power hitting.
Speaker 4: How long do the least of those guys have you
know what they're going to I'm going to play him
from from the get go.
Speaker 2: Here. They're going to get a ton of our bats.
Speaker 4: And we we're looking for some of those guys to
step up. Really will like some of those guys to
take over that every day role. And we know that
Camp it's really close doing that. Last year he got
to a good start second half of the season, the
not gods good, but we know he figures some stuff out.
You know, he's definitely in in in that, in that
that competition there with you mentioned Sach. We just got
low Berfido with Jake excellent center fielder. So it's going
to be interesting because I just don't think right now
as we speak today that I don't really know exactly
how that's gonna shake out. I'm hopeful that everything that
we are planning turns out that way. But these are
young players and we need to be patients, and they'll
they'll they'll let us know.
Speaker 1: The craziest thing. And I've mentioned this in my audience
for years covering all these spring trainings. I don't trust
numbers in March, and I don't trust numbers in September. Yeah,
you got one kid who had killed it in March
last year who look ahead Upton downs as you would admit,
but defense with the great and then Zach was great
in September. So the brighter lights are in April. They
count the same amount of time.
Speaker 4: You know what, And what I like about what you
just said that that we do have a sample size
of what March looked like, so we know that March won't.
We have enough seeing on players that Okay, March, this
player could be a really good March player, right we
we we saw this get in September, but we also
saw he did it in a pretty high leverage spot.
So he has some really good at bats, some big
home runs in big moments, So that stuff matters when
you are evaluating players. So we learn a lot about
from both of those players. So now I'm moving forward.
We'll see we'll see where this takes us.
Speaker 1: You got one, I got one?
Speaker 2: Okay, sure, why not?
Speaker 3: You gotta feel good about defensively, certainly out it's almost
whoever you pick it, and not out of a hat,
of course, but whoever you picked to put out there,
the outfield defense is going to be improved.
Speaker 4: Yes, athleticism, guys can go and and and you know,
take care of Boston the gap whoever's not starting. You know,
for example, if you're done and starting left.
Speaker 2: I got enough. I can replace defense.
Speaker 4: And you feel really good about about any of that stuff.
But yeah, that's been our goal this off season, trying
to stay more athletic, and we've been able to add
a few guys that helping us do that.
Speaker 1: Here it comes the question, here's a question. You're moving
a sock around. Tell me as much as you're wanting
to tell the city Houston. We have hundreds of people
listening right now. I wish it was but it's a holiday. Yeah,
Sak walks in.
Speaker 2: You hug him out and.
Speaker 1: Say, hey, how is your off season? I'm sure you've
talked him before. Then is he going, Okay, I'm here,
what do you want me to do?
Speaker 2: I mean, give us as much as.
Speaker 4: You can, okay, hitting not ask what you want me
to do. He already knew going in here what we
wanted him to do.
Speaker 2: But he's real. You know, once you get here and now.
Speaker 4: Anybody start moving in first, second, some third.
Speaker 2: I have.
Speaker 4: Full confidence that he could play all three. There's he
can do it right. We love the bat, but the
question is always how we're going to make all these work.
And that's where I come in and we have the conversation.
You know this will play out unless let's just give
it time and see where it takes us. And you know,
it's just not easy for players too.
Speaker 2: They want to know right now, and you.
Speaker 4: And I and I and I get it, but you know,
and it's they're all really good players.
Speaker 2: And that's where it's.
Speaker 1: It's the greatest utility player in the baseball today. You've
got the greatest pinch hitter available.
Speaker 2: For you today.
Speaker 4: But you know another thing, I don't want to look
at him as a utility player because you know, you know,
but this is the thing about about when you think
about an utility player, you think defense first. This guy
is one of the best hitters I know, so you
know they this is WIT's the reason why we're all like, okay,
but you know, but you know, I know our fans
ask you these questions all the time, and it's fair
fair enough, it's fair enough twice on Sundays, and I
get that I get asked the same questions. Uh, and
I'm going to continue to answer the same question. Let's
just give it time and and we played these out
and that is my my biggest job.
Speaker 2: And just make sure that those guys stay focused on
the mission.
Speaker 1: So many players have told us publicly and privately, you're
a great communicator your friends, but handle this can be you,
so thank you.
Speaker 2: Don't screw it up. We're counting on you.
Speaker 1: You. Joe spotted with us Matt and Ross here from
West Palm Beach a short time. I'll come back with
more here from Astro spring training in a moment now
in seven ninety