Plus: Astros on milestone watch
Any time the Astros and Orioles play each other like they did this week at Minute Maid Park, a family is split. On one side is Lisa Hyde, who's married to Orioles manager Brandon Hyde. On the other side is her sister, Pamela Espada, who's married to Astros bench coach Joe Espada. As family rivalries go, this one is rather civil. The sisters are extremely close, so a case could be made that nobody in the stands loses when the Astros and Orioles meet on the field. Don't tell that to their husbands, though, who are competitors through and through and trying to help their respective teams win the World Series. When the Astros went to Baltimore in August and won three of four games from the Orioles, much of the family was there, considering the sisters have some roots in the Northeast. So you can only imagine how excited the family would be if the Astros and Orioles meet in the postseason this year. "I think meeting up in the postseason would be a lot of fun, but I am not a competitive person," Pamela Espada said. "I look at is as either way, our family kind of wins. My husband wants to win and obviously Brandon would also like to win." Brandon Hyde married Lisa Dearth in 2006, and Joe married her youngest sister, Pamela, in 2009. Hyde was managing at Single-A Greensboro in 2006 at the same time Espada was the infield coordinator in the Marlins system. Espada would often stay at Hyde's house in Florida, which is how he ended up meeting Pamela. "He had a guest house at his property, and I used to stay at one of his guest houses and Pam used to drive down on the weekends from the University of Florida," Joe Espada said. "Like over the weekend, she used to come down and visit her dad and her sister and that's how she caught my eye." |
Pamela said neither she nor her sisters -- the middle sister, Lauren, is married to a Phillies fan named Jason Zitter -- were baseball fans before they got married. The girls grew up in Wellington, Fla., in south Florida. Now, baseball is their lives. "We joked after Lisa met Brandon that we didn't realize how many extra men that there was in south Florida around Spring Training," Pamela Espada said. "She met Brandon through another Marlins coach, who was local. And she had no clue about baseball." Hyde managed in the Marlins system from 2005-09 before serving as infield coordinator in 2010 and interim bench coach later in the 2010 season. He was on the Cubs staff from 2014-18 before the Orioles hired him to lead their rebuild prior to the 2019 season. Hyde won a ring with the Cubs in 2016. Espada coach in the Marlins system from 2006-10 before becoming third-base coach for the Marlins from 2010-13. He joined the Yankees as a scout in 2014 and later was the third-base coach (2015-17) before replacing Alex Cora as Houston's bench coach shortly after it won the World Series in 2017. Espada won a World Series last year. "I'm really happy for him and his success here," Hyde said. "He's an amazing coach and we worked together for a long time in Florida. We're very close and so I follow him closely and he follows me closely. He sends me texts after some games and I pull for him when he's not playing us. I'm very happy for him." |
When the Orioles clinched a playoff berth on Sunday, no one was happier than his brother-in-law. "He has worked really hard to get those guys to buy in, to change the culture, turn it into a winning culture," Joe Espada said. "I'm proud of the work he's done. … it's a long season of ups and downs and we just try to pick each other up when we've got a chance to talk to one another." And if the stars align and the Orioles and Astros meet in October, the family text chain will be … off the chain. "It's going to be pretty split on who they want to win," Joe Espada said. "I'm thinking this year there's going to be more on the Baltimore side because it is the first time they've been in the postseason in a while. A lot of people are cheering on the Astros, still." |
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"We're one game under .500 at home, which is the complete opposite of … the way we play on the road. I don't know exactly what it is. We've tried to put our finger on it. You don't know. I know one thing, though, they're hitting the ball out of the ballpark on us." -- Baker following Tuesday's loss to Baltimore which dropped the Astros to 38-39 at Minute Maid Park |
With 10 games remaining in the regular season, here are milestones some Astros players are chasing: • Jose Altuve needs one double to reach 400 for his career, joining Jeff Bagwell (488) and Craig Biggio (668) as the only players in franchise history to do that. • Yainer Diaz needs one home run while playing catcher to set the club rookie record for catchers with 15 (Mitch Meluskey had 14 in 2000), and he's four homers shy of tying Yordan Alvarez (27 in 2019) for most by any rookie in team history. • Alex Bregman needs four RBIs to reach 100 RBIs for the third time in his career (2018-19). • Kyle Tucker needs two steals and two home runs to become the second player in franchise history with 30 homers and 30 steals, joining Hall of Famer Bagwell, who did it twice. • Chas McCormick needs one steal to have 20 homers and 20 stolen bases in a season. |
THIS WEEK IN ASTROS HISTORY |
Sept. 20, 2007: Rookie catcher J.R. Towles, who was called up to the big leagues only two weeks prior, set a club record by driving in eight runs in an 18-1 win over the Cardinals in St. Louis, including his first career homer (which came off infielder Aaron Miles). He was 4-for-4 with two doubles and a homer. Yuli Gurriel tied Towles for the Astros record with eight RBIs on Aug. 7, 2019, and they are the only Houston players to drive in eight runs in a game. |
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