The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Brian Bogusevic Breaks Down Bryan Abreu and Astros Pitching

Episode Date: June 3, 2026

Brian Bogusevic Breaks Down Bryan Abreu and Astros Pitching

Time for us to spend a good 11 minutes or so with our good friend Brian Boga-S-C-Sevick of SCHN with us every Wednesday here on the Matt Thomas show with Ross at 11-01. Bogie, thanks for the visit. As always, 15 home runs allowed this year by Mike Burroughs. And we didn't have a big enough sample size as a member of the Pittsburgh Pirates. We've got a pretty good sample size here with the Astros. Pitch selection, location, a little bit of the above. Why has it been such a almost obvious or regular part of every one of his box scores that he's giving up so many home runs this year?

Mainly location. You know, it's when you have big misses, you get hurt in a big way, and a lot of the pitches that have gotten hit out have supposed to be in one spot and end up in another spot and they get hammered. Now, you know, he's had his fair share of, you know, executed a pitch, made a decent pitch, and a guy made a good swing, and that happens. But a lot of times it's a fastball that's supposed to be down in a way that ends up up and in or a breaking ball that's supposed to be down that floats into the middle of the zone. And it's just too many mistakes. And, you know, there are pitchers.

We've seen plenty of pitchers over the years who are Homer prone. And with the way guys pitch now and so many guys pitching up in the zone and the predominance of the high fastball. especially you're going to get clipped for homers every once in a while but it's it's when the homers happen it's a you know after a walk in a base runner and it's a three-run homer you know just in verlander you know it is a classic case of a guy who gave up a lot of home runs but never really got hurt by the home run because there was just never anybody on base when he did it you can't be walking guys and giving up lots of base runners and also be a homer prone that's not a good recipe You absolutely stole my name.

I was thinking as you were talking about guys that have had great histories, and Justin Verlinder comes into play. I mean, think about no matter what uniform he wore, he'd give up the home runs, but they were solo blast. And I guess that's the issue. Not only are there guys on the base pass, but he's doing a lot of this, unfortunately, with like at least two outs in the inning,

and that has to be highly discouraging. If you're in Mike Burroughs head right now or trying to get to him, what can you possibly say? Now, I know you're not a pitching coach, but you play one on radio and TV, so I'll let you do it right here. Yeah, I think first and foremost, we have to, you kind of have to stay with the perspective that he's got, I think, 35-ish starts in the big leagues,

which is about a year, basically, worth of experience. So he's still developing, and part of that development is figuring out what kind of pitcher you are, how you want to attack guys. And, you know, a lot of the pitchers that we've seen, who are the Homer-prone guys, guys are also big swing and miss guys because they have the high-end fastballs, whether it be because of velocity or spin or usually both, where they get mostly swings and misses

on those pitches up and then every once in a while somebody catches them or there's just a ton of swinging miss which creates not a lot of base runners. I don't know that Mike Burroughs is necessarily that kind of pitcher. I don't think he's ever going to be a huge swing and miss, not a lot of contact. I think he really, his stuff plays more towards being a contact-oriented pitcher. I mean, his best pitch is a change-up. That is an action pitch. That is a put-the-ball in play type of pitch.

So it's just kind of first and foremost figuring out just as a whole and in general, what kind of pitcher do you want to be? And I think if you're going to be a create contact pitcher, you've got to be much more conscious of where you are locating pitches so that the quality of contact is a certain kind. and there's just been too much hard contact for that style of pitching. Brian Bogosific with us here, Sports Talk 790. All right.

So, and I mentioned Brian Abray, and that's a lot of chatter as well, because the three-run home running gave up yesterday, it has not been a clean month. It's not been a clean year. It has been a dramatic falloff. And I talked about this with athletes, whether it's a relief pitcher for the Astros or even a high-end quarterback or basketball player. When the game fails you,

or you don't have enough left in the tank, there's no clock to it, there's no calendar to it. The question's going to have to go through the mind of Brian or bury you is, can I make any adjustments to save my season or is there just something wrong where I just can't get major league outs? Because at this point, Brian, or Bogie, there's no spot on the roster in putting them in games. High leverage, low leverage.

It just hasn't worked out. And like I said in basketball, you can't bury the 13, 14, 15th, guy on your bench, everybody in that bullpen's going to have to throw at some point during the course of a calendar week. Yeah, you have to get to a point to where there are situations where you're comfortable using him. And right now it's probably going to be the lowest leverage type situations until he gets right. And in terms of can he get right or can he get to a point to where he can get out, sure. I mean, he's done it throughout throughout his career being, you know, a 98, 99 mile an hour fastball and a wipeout slider.

But we've seen guys over and over get results with lesser stuff than that. And it's just figuring out how you do that. And, you know, there was a little bit of a stretch where he was getting really slider heavy and trying to locate that slider and really pitching off of that pitch predominantly, which is kind of a different style than what he was in terms of just going out there and overpowering people. But it can work. he's going to have to find more of a fastball, though.

And just the inconsistency and the velocity is concerning. I mean, he was up to 97 yesterday. He also threw a couple at 91, 92 miles an hour. So it's in there, but it's not getting there often enough. And he's just got to get to a place to where the fastball velocity and really the release in the location can be a little bit more consistent because even if you get the slider right, you've got to be able to threaten with a fastball. at least to a degree.

And there's just not enough fastballs in the zone. There's not enough quality fastballs right now to even let the slider play when he gets a pretty good feel for it. So, yeah, he can definitely, even with diminished stuff, he still has the ability to get people out. Because even if you're 93, 94 with a pretty good slider, that can work. It's just got to be located better and it's got to be more consistent with what that fastball is.

It's just so depressing to see that when he takes the. mound you're not going all right here's an opportunity for you to get your mojo back it's what problems you're going to find yourself in and and and that happens a lot i mean that was montaero a couple of years ago uh honestly brian and and so i'm not trying to make the comp to him but it it's infuriating to people and i think probably joe is is really nervous about putting him in any spot because there just hasn't been an opportunity for him i mean may was pretty good for him, but there were even some signs that you kind of got a little nervous about that. If you would get May from him, you would take it because that's obviously better than when he did

the first six weeks of the season. Yeah, and I mean, look, momentum is real, and it works both ways. And you know when a guy steps in a mound and he's really confident, really has it going, and it just feels like things are going right. That's where Spencer is at right now. You just feel like no matter what happens, it's going to turn in his favor. And the opposite side of that is when you have a guy who is really struggling and almost has his confidence shaken before he even gets out there before it even goes bad. And it just feels like it is going to go bad.

And you could see that during his outing yesterday, right, the big blow was the three run homer. The weird thing is that that's probably the best executed pitch that he made of the entire outing. It was a perfectly located slider to where you wanted in the left-handed hitter. he just got enough of it to keep it fair and hit the foul pole. But when things are going in the way that they are for Brian Abray, even if you try to navigate through all the difficulties and then you go make your pitch finally, hopefully to get out of the inning, and that ends up being the knockout blow. And it's just that's where it's at right now.

And how do you make that turn? There is no actual formula for it. You just have to slowly work your way out of it to where your stuff starts to feel better, your confidence starts to feel better, and then all of a sudden you're standing out of the mound, and you're thinking that things are going to go right for you, and then they eventually do. We see Paul Skeens, clearly on television when you want to watch a pirate game,

or the once a year that the Astros play the Pirates, and sometimes rotations don't allow that to happen. And this may be a dated reference for you, but when I was growing up, I watched Nolan Ryan have an ERA of 2.5, 2.75, a bunch of strikeouts, and he'd sit there with a 12-10 record. or he was 11 and 15. Paul Skeens, bogey, is 6 and 5 with a 289 ERA.

Is that going to be his destiny as long as he's wearing Pittsburgh gear? Because it feels like his win-law should be a lot better than what he puts on the mound every time he goes out there. Yeah, it doesn't always line up, and there's so many things that go into it. You know, his season is weird. His numbers are weird. He's had a couple of outings that have really skewed.

As good as his ERA is, a lot of his runs have come, you know, in just a couple of outings. And as well as he has pitched on the whole, the wins and losses aren't there. This Pittsburgh team, though, they are good. And, I mean, we saw the whole experience of them offensively yesterday and the power and the speed and the contact. And, you know, they're a team who's going to be able to do enough offensively day in and day out because they can do so many different things. So I think as the team gets better, because they have not been good over the first couple of years that he's been there. But he's going to be a guy who can really pitch this situation, right? He's got the stuff.

He's got the deep repertoire. He can figure out lineups and how to navigate them multiple times. So as that team continues to get better now, I think he's going to be a guy who, you know, maybe not always. They're not going to be a juggernaut type of thing and run off 100 wins where you're going to see guys with 20 plus wins. But, no, he's going to do a whole lot of winning with the way this organization is trending. Wrapping up our conversation with Brian Bogussevik. here comes the Captain obvious question.

I even pose this to Joe, and I felt silly doing it. Look, the Mariners, Brian, have won eight straight games. Somebody was going to step up and take off in this division. And frankly, it's probably been, it's mostly been the Mariners, and the Rangers are playing better since the Astros series. So how do you walk into the locker room or the clubhouse, shut the door and say, hey, guys, I believe in y'all. We've lost three and a half games in the standings in about five days.

We spent a lot of time, you know, clipping the clubhouse. those games off and playing good baseball, winning on the road trip. I need you to step it up. Baseball doesn't work that way. So what do you do if you are on Houston Astero right now and you are thinking this team should be better than its record states and should be better than its standings are? But yet you have seen the Mariners take off. You lose three or four and now you're right back where you started about two weeks ago.

Yeah, I think, I mean, first of all, you're absolutely right. It is kind of go time in the division, right? the silver lining of nobody looks like they want to win the division and nobody's made their run yet is kind of over because the Mariners are making that run. And the Mariners are the team that can make the run. They've got the starting pitching to consistently go out there day after day after day after day and give them a shot. They've got a very streaky offense that is hot right now and Julio Rodriguez is hot. And when they're going like that, they are the team that could theoretically really pull away.

But at the same time, it is unfortunate that their winning streak has coincided with the last, you know, four games for the Astros where things haven't gone. But if you do look at it big picture, the team as a whole is playing better than they had in the past. And if they continue to make those improvements, you know, a bad series or a bad couple of games isn't going to be really a death blow. But no, the urgency has to be there. I think everybody knows that the urgency has to be there because of the way the first month plus went. there isn't going to be the luxury of it's a long season or it's just the middle of the summer. Like it's sense of urgency from here on out

and it's maybe turned up a little bit right now when you look at the top of the division and the team that's probably the best team in the division is playing really well right now. So you have to try to keep pace. But I don't think you need to go in there and rally the troops because everybody knows the deal. Bogey, thank you very much for the time.

As always, I'll see the ballpark later this evening. It should be fun. Spencer Arrogati, the American League pitcher of the month going against this guy named Paul Skeens. It should be fun. Thank you for the time, and we'll see you later tonight. All right, I'll see you. It's going to be a good one tonight.