Steve Sparks | Houston Astros Radio Voice

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For important information, visit principle.com slash disclosures. Former big league pitcher Steve Sparks who joins us from the Dallas Fort Worth area. Arlington is where the ballpark is located as the Astros grab this third game and never did have a lead in the first two games in their own park, Steve. But here they are, they're able to cut into that Rangers lead. So what was the biggest difference in the Astros winning game three? You know what Amy, I think it's just the the reliance on the home run I think is it hurt Astros at the beginning of the postseason. Same thing against the Twins and coming into tonight's game. I think 80% of their runs had scored via the home run.

So to be able to get some hits with runners in scoring position, I think they had five of them tonight with their ninth place hitter Martin Maldonado who in the second inning with two outs got that big two run single. I think that got everybody you know off their seats in the dugout and kind of fired up and it kind of kind of going I thought you were a pitcher in the big leagues that Max Scherzer gets the start in game number three hadn't pitched in quite a while. How long does it take for a pitcher to settle back in where he can feel comfortable?

You know why? Sometimes it doesn't take long at all when you look at his stuff. You know we saw it right away in the first inning. We saw the lively hop on his fastball, the sharp break on everything else. It's kind of weird because when he came back out for the second inning which is kind of typical of somebody who hasn't pitched in 36 days is on an 0-2 pitch he hit Alvarez the fastball went behind front leg and hit his back foot.

So that's how far he missed his target and I say that because you don't really lose arm speed or anything like that if you're coming back after a big layoff. It's more command and being able to spot your pitches where you need to in a big game like this. And on the other side Christian Javier he's exactly what the Astros needed. What did you see from him on the mound? Well first of all I've got to give a lot to the Astros pitching coaches. I'll be honest with you the second half of the season he was he was bad. You know he didn't pitch well at all. They just worked and worked and worked. They were close. It's going man late in the season to be able to see a big change in somebody.

Happened very often because your body's so sore and you're you're tired. Javier pitching the WBC he had to ramp it up early. Not very much recovery time from last postseason. I just didn't think he was going to get there but stuck with it and I can't believe at the last four outings he's looked like himself again. A pitcher who last year gave up an opponent's batting average of 170 and he's getting the swing and miss again. It's the fastball is back to where it was and he just wasn't locating.

He wasn't getting any swing and miss like two and a half months but for whatever reason I don't know magic beans they got in their back pockets but the pitching coaches did wonders getting him back to what we saw last postseason. Does it surprise you at all that the first three games have been won by the road team? No I mean the Astros had a similar occurrence in 2019. They're an old series where every game of a seven game series was won by the visiting team. I don't know what it really means about this Astros team in particular. People ask us, we ask them and I talked to Dusty Baker about it. Nobody has a really good explanation for why the Astros haven't played very well at home this year. Sometimes you run out of explanations and things just go on.

You just got to figure out something else. Steve Sparks is part of the radio team for the Houston Astros. Enjoy listening to him and Robert Ford on a nightly basis and he's with us from Arlington the Dallas area. It's after hours here on CBS Sports Radio. It's hard to tell on TV so I'm interested to hear your perspective. How many Astros fans made the trip to Arlington?

You know Amy to be honest with you I was a little surprised by this. It's a great question. Typically during the regular season especially the last two or three years the Astros fans have come up by diving in droves and there's been a lot I would say maybe a quarter of the stands are filled with Astros fans. Maybe even a little bit more but tonight it wasn't as many. So many excited Rangers fans and I'm sure there's less tickets available for us to come up here and it caused a little havoc. So we were watching for that and they tried to make a little bit of noise on a couple of occasions but more than anything else I think it was Javier who quiet the Rangers fans to a degree and we know that's a pretty good recipe for success when you're on the road. And what about at Minute Maid Park? How many Rangers fans managed to get in there? They got in there. You know the Astros fans have been doing this for a while.

They've been very spoiled for the last seven years after 10. So Alcubay tomorrow is playing in his 100th postseason game believe it or not. The Astros fans let some of them in there you know and they tried to make some noise and they were pretty happy those two games at Minute Maid Park and when your team's winning on the road you can hear them.

You know you can hear those people when you're trying to get it going on a couple of occasions when you feel like you're about to erupt that somebody could get a big hit it just didn't happen happen for them in game one and two. Jose Altuve as you point out has an incredible legacy with Houston Astros going back to when he was a high draft pick and one of the building blocks of a team that has now gone to seven consecutive American League championship series. What he's been able to do over that time really maintaining such a high level of play and setting the tone. How would you even begin to summarize or describe his contributions to this team in this time? He's the most popular player on the team. He's a great leader and he's selfless so the guys really respect him you know and you know to be a superstar and to treat everybody like you know everybody the same and he's the best on the team in the community. He doesn't ask for any attention for everything he does so it all those things kind of add up but I'll say this Amy I've never seen a player turn turn his career into a different type of player and I want to say like the first five or six years he won three batting titles got a lot of hits stole a lot of bases and then he kind of flipped the script and he started to realize you know what I'm I've got the ability and I might be able to help the team a little more and he started to set his goals to get at 900 ops so he had to get on base more he had to walk more but he also had to slug a little bit more so he started to add you know the the home run component into what he's able to do and you know once Springer left the team and signed with the Blue Jays as a free agent you know Altuve at the top of the order was kind of like Springer somebody at the top who could really put a little fear into the starting pitcher wouldn't let him ease into a game like that prototypical slap hitter at the top he had the ability to to take you deep at the very first pitch so it's a very uneasy feeling as a pitcher as you're trying to tiptoe sometimes into a game and see what you have knowing that you can make a mistake on the very first pitch and get hurt and fall behind quickly. What does it mean to have Justin Verlander back with his team again? It means a lot you know it lets everybody else kind of fall back into the line and he's pitched more game one starts than anybody else in postseason history so he can take that mantle and kind of run with that and set the tone and he takes pride in it he sets a very high standard you know he expects people to be on high alert he's one of those guys too Amy and I've seen this and when I see our monitors in our radio booth he's always in the dugout you know and I'll say this I had a lot of teammates who were starting pitchers and on their days that they weren't pitching half the time they were in the clubhouse or grabbing something to eat or watching something else on tv a football game or something else he's in the dugout he's talking baseball with the other pitchers on the team or even a position player but he sets a great example in that way. Steve Sparks is with us from where are you guys where do you stay actually Dallas Fort Worth?

Yeah we stay in Dallas you know we stay in downtown we get spread out a little bit there's so many more people that travel during the playoff situation so typically we're with the team all year but they have so much family and so much front office we get spread out a little bit to a couple different hotels. All right so from Dallas after game three of the ALCS at the ballpark at Arlington there it's after hours here on CBS Sports Radio the Astros they end up catching the Rangers on the final day of the regular season they win the division title in a tie break and it was a good battle going back over the last month even six weeks or so but there was a time when the Rangers had a pretty sizable lead in the division even the Mariners were in the mix for the division title what was the turning point for the Astros dedication to to grabbing that title too? You know what there wasn't a turning point Amy I mean it was a grind they won five of their last six on the road but in that last stretch the last month of the season they got swept by the Oakland A's they got swept by the Kansas City Royals they lost a ton of baseball games to teams that they should have beaten to be quite frank so it was not very dissimilar to what the Yankees did the last team that won back-to-back titles was the 98-99 in 2000 New York Yankees and that 2000 Yankees team lost 15 of their last 18 games they lost to Baltimore who was last in the division they lost to the Detroit Tigers they got swept by them they were last in their division very similar circumstances to what the Astros did they limped in they got pretty lucky to to get into the playoffs to be honest with you Seattle, Texas Rangers nor the Astros played very well in the last month of the season they got in you know it's a long season they won 90 games the same number as Texas and they had the tiebreaker so they got the buy and they needed it they were beat up uh and kind of look at things like it looked like they only had a couple of really decent starters at that time they felt like if they had to waste those in the wild card rounds uh they were really going to be compromised to the division series so they felt like they got pretty lucky in that regard. By the way we really enjoyed playing a snippet of your conversation with Dusty Baker after they beat the twins where he's trying to spit out that stat and you guys are either in the middle of the celebration or on the field I couldn't tell which but he butchers the stat and you're like you couldn't have got that more wrong and he said you sound like my mother oh yeah we enjoyed playing that back.

That's funny you know what's funny about that is that stayed with him I kind of forgot about it but that stayed with him and he brought me the article the next day to show me what he was trying to say he was still in that conversation he said bring that back to me later so I some article that Buster only wrote that he butchered for about five minutes trying to explain it. So good obviously he's been part of their staying power but correct me if I'm wrong there are what four guys now that still remain from 2017. How is that even possible to essentially turn over almost your entire roster not to mention your front office and your manager and your coaching staff and still go to seven consecutive American League Championship Series? You know I can almost sum it up in one thing when people ask why this team's been able to sustain the success that they have there was one thing in particular that was very helpful and brought on by a guy by the name of Oz Ocampo and he was the Astros international scout and he felt like that some teams might have been missing on some guys you know they sign all these Latin guys when they're 16 years old they thought you know there's got to be some guys slipping through the cracks let's just take a shot on some guys and they started to sign guys that were 19, 20, 21 years old which were ancient right you think why would why would you do that you know so they did it and I'll be darned you know if some of these guys start to filter through and some of the names are Fromber Valdez signed when he was 20 years old wow Kristen Javier was 20 years old when he signed Jose Urquidy was 20 years old uh Luis Garcia who was second place in the rookie of the year a few years ago he just had Tommy John surgery but he was part of that mix Brian Abreu who you could argue is one of the best relief pitchers in baseball uh was in that mix and another guy who's on their playoff roster Ronel Blanco was working in a car wash when he was 22 years old he signed with the Astros and he's in the big leagues now as a 30 year old so I say that for this so maybe got a little bit lucky but it was very smart but they have all these guys who have contributed but not only that think about how many times a 16 year old guy signs and by the time he's 21 or 22 years old the team loses control because he hasn't got to the big leagues yet somebody else gets him for his prime of his career but the Astros have all these controllable pitchers you know Javier and all these guys you know still aren't free agents and they're all closing in on 27 to 31 years old now and they're pitching in their prime for for playoff caliber team wow brilliant strategy even if it was a bit risky it obviously worked out wow it does sound risky but they weren't paying I mean they were only paying you know these guys had no leverage so they were only paying them $25,000 to sign I mean that's a lot of money to these guys but compared to you look at first rounders or third rounders and these guys are getting somewhere between one and three or four million dollars a lot of times in those early rounds in the draft Steve before I let you go obviously still a long way to go against a Rangers team that has an incredibly powerful and potent lineup from a pitcher's perspective how do you approach a lineup like that even as the Astros try to climb back in the series you know what I think you have to do Amy especially when you're playing in series like this you know a lot of times you you watch the first game and you kind of figure out all right this is how they're going to try to get guys out but when you're facing guys like Seager and Simeon and Adolis Garcia and Josh Young and all these guys I don't feel like there is one way you can stay with an approach when you're playing a long series like this if this goes to seven games say you know if you stay with you know fastballs in and breaking stuff away the whole time guys are going to start cheating for those pitches and start looking for you if you miss by just a little bit they're going to get hammered so I say that to say this I think you have to mix it up on good hitters I say that a lot when people say how do you get Jordan Alvarez out there's no one way you have to mix it up and he has to almost be looking for something else for you to be able to get him out sometimes when he gets locked in but I think in series like this especially as they progress you better have a couple tricks in your back pocket to to unleash because I don't think there's certainly one way to get certain guys out I'll say this and I think this is tried tried and true throughout the playoffs that I've been watching here for a little while now you got to pitch inside I mean you just can't live outside away away away over and over and over again because you can't get away with any mistakes you got to make guys conscious conscious inside once or twice at least during a game and showing that you can throw strikes in there too so they can't dive out over the plate all game long oh great stuff I like that Steve Sparks a former big leaguer himself and part of the radio team for the Houston Astros along with Robert Ford one of my favorite listens you guys always have such a good time you make it fun for the audience as well and now looking at a 2-1 deficit for the Astros and the ALCS but yeah they've been here before it's always good to catch up with you thank you so much for a couple of minutes you too Amy thanks for having me I'm here to tell you about pom pom at home where comfort meets elegance pom pom at home is offering 20 off site wide for a limited time see why so many of the top designers use pom poms luxury easy care bedding they have created a 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