The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Bogusevic Sounds Off on Carlos Correa’s Season-Ending Injury and Astros Injury Crisis

Episode Date: May 6, 2026

Bogusevic Sounds Off on Carlos Correa’s Season-Ending Injury and Astros Injury Crisis

Sports Talk 790, home of your Astros. And it will be the rubber game of a three-game series between the Astros and the Dodgers. The storyline obviously not evolving involving the game today per se, but what is going around the team, as we welcome you to today's edition of the On Deck Show, Matt Thomas with you on Sports Talk 790. Astros and Dodgers will get to more details on that coming up in a little bit. But first things first, word that a popped tendon will send Carlos Correa to the injured list. He is done for the season. Brian Bogosovic will be on the call for the pregame show on Space City Home Network here in just a few minutes and he joins us now from Dyken Park. Obviously, a somber mood around the organization right now and the list continues to pile up bogey on these just terrible injuries the Astros have gone through.

Yeah, it's getting to the point to where it's just kind of unbelievable that you keep having these significant injuries to your best players. and, you know, we don't need to sit here and discuss what Carlos Correa means to the team from on the field standpoint. But the fact that you're losing, you know, one of the steadying voices and one of the leaders who, you know, can be the guy to keep everybody moving in the right direction as they try to pull themselves out of the hole and just thinking about it from a whole team standpoint. It looked like they might finally be getting to the other side of this injury thing. You know, Nick Allen came back this week. Ben and Soussa came back. You're starting to see these pitchers getting out on rehab assignments and maybe the light at the end of the tunnel there.

And then to have back-to-back, you know, Yiner goes down. Carlos Correa goes down for extended periods of time. And it's just like this black cloud that's been injuries that's hanging over the team. It just won't go away. Bogi, is there something, some sort of voodoo around the batting cage? You brought it up. You have Janair Diaz gets hurt two days ago. Yesterday it was Carlos Correa.

they're all, obviously, that's fluky, but man, to have this happening back-to-back days is just a terrible aura around that part of the stadium before it's first pitch. It is, and the most maddening thing about it is, you know, when you're looking at when guys get hurt and you kind of look at it in hindsight and say, what are the events that led up to this? What could we have done differently? How can we prevent these things from happening in the future? There were no signs pointing to any of this. Yiner said that he had not felt anything in his side oblique area leading up to the swing where he got hurt. And Carlos, obviously, you know, he was out yesterday taking ground balls early, bouncing around the field, looked great, looked strong.

And then he goes in to take a couple of swings before the game, and the ankle tendon just explodes on him. And there's really nothing you can do leading up to try to prevent these kinds of things. It's just, you know, it's just bad luck all around. Bogie, you're losing a guy that not only you mentioned the intangibles, but he has been playing a lot of shortstop with Jeremy Pena out. That left side of the infield is very, very inexperienced right now. Absolutely. And it just gets to the point to where, you know, you kind of laugh at saying,

we thought we had this covered. You know, you had Jeremy Pena, who's an emerging star and a gold glove winner to be the shortstop. The backup plan is Carlos. Correa, who's a platinum gold glove winner and a four and an all star. And now you're on to the option number three with Nick Allen in the mix, who's a former gold glove finalist, but Braden Shoemakes over there today. Depth is one thing. Everybody has to build up.

It's something that you have to try to plan for and have contingencies going into the season. But when you're talking about, you know, shortstop number three and four and starting pitchers number nine and ten, there's only so much you can do. Bogey, it feels like you want to go find Dana Brown. You want to go find Joe Espada, give them a hugs. But this is a doggy dog world. This is about, you know, injuries are a part of every baseball team. Obviously, the Astros have been through way more than anybody had in the last couple of years.

But their thoughts right now have just got to be worried about the health of their current team, trying to put out a competitive team. And, oh, by the way, they're still working on trying to keep their jobs beyond 2026. Yeah, I'm sure kind of in the back of their minds somewhere they're, you kind of throw your hands up and say, you know, what, what can I do? What could we do? But the message has to be simple. The message has to be straightforward to the team of it doesn't matter, right?

It doesn't matter who's in the lineup. It doesn't matter who's on the mound. Our job is to go out there and win, and other teams are dealing with injuries. And they're certainly not going to come in here and feel bad. They're going to see an opportunity to, you know, kind of put you down in too deep of hold the crawl out of. So what can you do is go out there and try to tread water. Try to tread water until Jeremy Pena comes back and he can slot back into shortstop. Try to tread water until Hunter Brown comes back and you get some of these arms back.

And until then, it doesn't matter who you are. It doesn't matter where you started your season, what organization you are in on opening day. If you are here, your job is to win a game today. Let's get a couple of positives in here. And then we'll get to Sugar Land real quick. A thought or two about yesterday Peter Lambert was fantastic. Brian King embraced the role of getting the two innings taken care of. And when you are going to hold your head above water, as you say,

you've got to rely on a couple of key hits and some good defense. And the Astros got that last night. Yeah, I think they got kind of everything they needed in the sense of you need some big individual performances, right? Obviously, Peter Lambert steps up and was great, stood toe to toe with Joe Hohontani and outpitched him. And you need those kinds of individual days from guys. But more so the good days from the team as a whole.

And you look at the game yesterday, and you got very good pitching, you got timely hitting, you got an offense that was able to scrape some runs against a very good starting pitcher who did have his really good stuff. It's not like Shohei Otani was off yesterday. They played great defense. They played a lot of really good defense. So is that model repeatable? Well, maybe not get seven innings of shutout baseball from your starter every day.

but the idea of playing good all around baseball and having those kinds of clean games to consistently give yourself a chance, not have blow-up days, not have days where you just didn't play well enough to win under any circumstances. They need days like that moving forward. So that's as good of a sign as there is for individual guys stepping up and having those days. Farlett, you're running. You've got to do the television in a few minutes. We were obviously at the ballpark yesterday and did not see what happened in Sugarland with EMI. the reports on Hader were obviously very good.

We'll give a detail on that in a minute. EMI is scheduled to pitch next week for the Astros. Pitch clock issues, mound, hardness, whatever. I mean, you don't want it to be one excuse after the other, but that was a little bit of alarming. And I guess the question is, is you know, someone that played overseas in changing of rules. For Emi, he knew the pitch clock was going to be a factor.

He's got basically a week to get it fixed, because this Astros rotation needs him right now in the worst way because we've seen way too many bullpen games the last couple weeks. Yeah, there are adjustments that you need to make. There are things that are different about, you know, Japanese baseball and American baseball and all these things. But your job as a player, wherever you are, whatever league you're playing in,

it is to perform and it is to adjust so that you can perform. And he's going to have to figure it out, and he's going to have to figure it out at the major league level. They're trying to give him some leeway to, get comfortable and have these couple minor league starts to hopefully find that comfort. And it doesn't appear that he's really done so. Just the alarming number of how few strikes he through and the walk numbers. But they're just at a point to where they need him here.

You can cover up for injuries and the pitching staff in the short term. And you can dip into that depth until guys come back. But when you're in a situation where you're running out starters who are seventh, eighth, ninth in the depth chart coming into the season. You can only do that for so long. And with Hunter still out, with Christian Javier still out, you have a guy in IMAI who, by all accounts, is physically healthy, well, you've got to be out there on the mound. And it's just gotten to that point.

And the biggest thing is that he's going to have to find a way to throw more strikes. If you're out there throwing 40% strikes against major league hitters, you're not going to be out there for very long, and that's going to be a problem. Bogie, thanks for the great work. We'll talk again next Wednesday. I appreciate it. Look forward to seeing you on Space City today. All right, cool. See it.