CLASS OF MLB

How the Astros continue to run circles around MLB (on and off camera)

How the Astros continue to run circles around MLB (on and off camera)
The Astros spare no expense with their broadcast team. Composite image by Brandon Strange.
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The Astros leave today for Minnesota to start their first road trip of the 2023 season. The entire Astros broadcast crew, television and radio, will be aboard the plane, as they will for every Astros away series this season.

That’s not how it is for every team. The Angels recently announced that their radio team won’t be traveling with the club. The same for the Blue Jays. The Angels’ excuse: they’ll be saving $185,000 by not sending its radio team on road trips.

It should be noted that the Angels pay Anthony Rendon $35 million per year on a seven-year contract. The last two injury-plagued seasons, Rendon has batted .229 and .240. He is hitting .000 so far this season and he’s currently suspended for a physical confrontation with a fan.

But the Angels are saving the cost of Breakfast Baconators for its announcers.

Caught up with Astros TV play-by-play announcer Todd Kalas and asked, is it really important for announcers to travel with the team and call the games live in ballparks? It’s not like Kalas and the Astros crew haven’t called games from a TV studio. They did it for three spring training games this year, and the entire 2020 and 2021 Covid seasons.

SportsMap: Does it make a difference for fans at home whether you’re at the ballpark during road trips or announcing the games off a TV screen back in Houston:

Todd Kalas: It’s imperative to be on the road with the team for a number of reasons. The first and most important is, when you’re watching a game live and calling it, you can see the whole field. You see everything you want to see when you want to see it. You’re not relying on camera coverages. The second part is, you get a chance to be with the team when you travel to road games. You’re all pulling from the same rope, and you’re really one as an organization. We didn’t travel during the pandemic years. We were relying on Zoom calls for interviews with the players. We were finding out the same information as everybody else on the Zoom calls. We weren’t able to get insider information because we weren’t with the team. When you travel with the team you develop relationships with the players, coaches and the manager. They know that we’re all part of the same organization and they trust us.

SportsMap: What can you see live that you can’t see on a TV monitor?

TK: You see where the fielders are positioned and other nuances that aren’t picked up by cameras. You see the game, you feel the game, you experience the game. It’s so much different than when we were calling it from a studio. During the spring training games this year, we saw a monitor that carried the same thing you saw at home.

During the pandemic, we saw the main feed. We also saw different feeds like a wide angle of the entire field, we saw the bullpens, and other angles. The toughest challenges during the pandemic were checked swings. We didn’t know if it was strike or not because the camera didn’t always cut to the umpire fast enough. Also, we couldn’t see who was in the on deck circle, so we didn’t know if a pinch hitter was coming up. Fair and foul balls were difficult to call, too.

SportsMap: How many people are part of the Astros TV broadcast travel team?

TK: This year there are four of us, Blummer, Julia, me and a production person. The producer and director aren’t traveling with us yet, but that’s changing. The producer will start traveling with us soon and the director will join us for some trips. Our full team will be six people, three announcers and three production people.

SportsMap: What exactly are your travel nuts and bolts when the Astros hit the road?

TK: We get a per diem for expenses and we stay in the same hotel as the team. How we get to the stadium is up to us. There are three busses every game that leave the hotel for the stadium. One goes super early, another goes four or five hours before the game, and the other one goes about three hours before the game. We can go on any of those busses, or we can take an Uber or public transportation. I’ll never get tired of traveling at the major league level. We go on charters, the same plane as the players, so we’re not going through airports or TSA. We leave our luggage at the hotel and it shows up at our next hotel. It’s very easy travel. There are some challenges like when we do a west coast game and we get home at 4 a.m. and we have to broadcast a game later that day. But for the most part, the travel is very accommodating for the players and announcers so we can be at our best.

SportsMap: When the schedule comes out, do you circle certain favorite dates and cities?

TK: We do. I enjoy going back to Philly (where he spent most of his childhood) and I lived in Tampa for more than 20 years. But mostly we look for off days in cities that have good golf. When the schedule allows us, we try our best to tee it up.

Editor's note: Catch Todd Kalas talking Astros every week on ESPN Houston 97.5's The Wheelhouse!

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The top seeds have talent for days! Photo by Jamie Squire/Getty Images.

Looking for an inspiring underdog or a glass slipper lying around in San Antonio? This year's version of the Final Four is not for you.

Fittingly for an NCAA Tournament in which big schools from big conferences took record numbers of spots in the first week, then hogged them all for the Sweet 16, the last week will bring a collection of all four teams seeded No. 1 to the sport's biggest stage to play for the title.

When Florida meets Auburn in an all-Southeastern Conference clash and Duke faces Houston in a meeting between the Atlantic Coast and Big 12 conferences, it will mark only the second time since seeding began in 1979 that all four No. 1s have made it to the final weekend.

The last time it happened, in 2008, one of the teams was Memphis, which hailed from Conference USA.

This time around, there are no mid-majors or small majors. Only the best teams from the best conferences — except the Big Ten, which will hasn't had a team win it all since 2000 — who also have the nation's best players.

Here's a look at the best player on each team (for Auburn, Duke and Florida, they are AP All-Americans ), along with another who might make an impact in San Antonio once the games start Saturday.

Johni Broome and Tahaad Pettiford, Auburn

Broome hit his elbow hard in the second half of the Tigers' 70-64 win over Michigan State. He left the court, but then came back, saying team doctors told him there was nothing wrong. He averages 18 points and nearly 11 rebounds and had 20-10 games in both wins this week. Clearly, his health will be a storyline.

If NBA scouts only look at backup guard Pettiford's tournament, where he has averaged 17.2 points and sparked Auburn on a huge run in the Sweet 16 win against Michigan, they'd pick him in the first round. If they look at his overall body of work, they might say he still needs work. Either way, he could be a difference-maker over two games.

Cooper Flagg and Khaman Maluach, Duke

There are times — see the 30-point, seven-rebound, six-assist skills clinic against BYU — when Flagg just looks like he's toying with everyone. There are other times — see Saturday's win over Alabama — when he looks human. Which is more than enough, considering all the talent surrounding him.

Maluach is 7-foot-2 and has a standing reach of 9-8. If any opponent overplays him, they can expect a lob for an alley-oop dunk. He shot 12 for 15 over Sweet 16 weekend, and pretty much all the shots were from 4 feet or closer.

Walter Clayton Jr. and Will Richard, Florida

Clayton made the tying and go-ahead 3s in Florida's ferocious comeback against Texas Tech. He finished with 30 points and his coach, Todd Golden, said, “There’s not another player in America you would rather have right now than Walter Clayton with the ball in his hands in a big-time moment.”

During one two-game stretch in February, Richard had two points in one contest and 21 the next. During another, he scored zero, then 30. Fill in the blanks here, but he could be a big factor for the Gators either way.

Joseph Tugler and L.J. Cryer, Houston

Fittingly for the team with the nation's best defense, a player who only averages 5.5 points could be the most valuable for the Cougars. Tugler is on everyone's all-defense list, and for Houston to have any chance at stopping Flagg, it'll have to figure out ways to use Tugler to do it.

Cryer is Houston's leading scorer at 15.2 points a game. If the Cougars end up as national champs, it will have to be because he played the two best games of his life.

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