The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Brian Bogusevic Breaks Down Individual Astros Players Struggles

Episode Date: August 13, 2026

Brian Bogusevic Breaks Down Individual Astros Players Struggles

is the Matt Thomas show with Ross. 11.02 on Sports Talk 7.9. We appreciate Brian Bogus, moving from yesterday to today for his Thursday, 11 o'clock visit. Bogie, I got to be honest with that. I brought this up to open up the show today under the preface of all wins are great. Okay? I'm just going to make sure I tell you that all victories are great.

But since I've been an astro fan since 1979, Bogie, That was one of the five worst victories I've ever seen the Astros ever win in their franchise history. Where do you put that among the all-time worst victories you've ever seen in a baseball game? It's a pretty fair assessment. It was not pretty.

They didn't play particularly well. Most of all, it was just kind of boring. You know, sometimes you have poorly played games that at least are exciting because there's, you know, a lot of action. There wasn't a whole lot of action. But, yeah, wins a win. And you know what, though, it might not be even the worst one of the season.

That Angels game still is probably up there. That was more, you know, the Angels just completely dumping on themselves. But, yeah, it was bad. The Giants are bad. And it was one of those series where it felt like, like, if the Esters could just hang around long enough in all of the games, eventually the Giants would just give it to them. And that's exactly what happened, at least in two of the three games. Let me ask you this, and these are two different things. playing a bad team in a series,

you can play down on a competition. It happens in all sports. But I want to get to the getaway games. And look, you've got a long flight coming back. It's the dog days of August. You're not ready to hit September yet for the pennant chase. You're playing a subpar team. You've been through a lot of these,

whether you were playing in college or the pros. How do good teams become great teams when they don't allow that last day of a road trip, day game, getaway day, affect them as much as sometimes teams do? Yeah, you know, it's really one of many things, right? There's a lot of things like that that can affect you, whether it's, you know, the last couple of series leading into the All-Star break

or, you know, days where maybe weather in the mix and you end up playing on a day where you thought maybe you were going to get rained out, those things that can kind of turn the switch off mentally. So they all kind of fall under the same category for me. and it has to do with just, are we all moving in the right direction just as a whole? Are we all on the same plan? Are we all, do we all have the same goals? And this team, they haven't always played their best, but they've never really given things away.

They've never really fallen, they have that Oriole series where they look completely flat and then they immediately bounce back and look like the best version of themselves. If you can do those kinds of things, you're not going to let all of those other things affect you all of them. the time. But yes, you're human. There are times when you're tired. There are times when you just want to get home. There are times when you just want to get to the off day. But, you know, good teams know that a Sunday game in June means the same as, you know, game 162 at the end of year. Another thing that I brought up to Ross yesterday that we talked about, you know, when guys go through slumps, you always hear of the needs a day off, needs to sit, just kind of let the game come to him. And we'll

use Christian Walker as an example. He didn't really get a full off day yesterday because he was brought in late in the contest. But when you're slumping, Brian, people think a day I was supposed to fix that. When you're slumping in work, usually take a weekend off or ho. Go take a week off in Mexico

and go sit on a beach. Now, you do get highly compensated to do this. There's only a handful of people that get to play professional baseball and make good money. But man, it's a cruel world because when you're supposed to be slumping and need time away from the sport, that means 24 hours, but that also means you're in uniform, you may be a defensive replacement,

and you're most likely going to pinch hit in the ballgame too. Yeah, you can't ever totally get away, right? Because who knows what's going to happen? And especially this time of year, you know, a lot of times, especially early in the season, if a manager gives one of the regulars a day off, they'll tell them, hey, there's no way, right? Like, I'm not going to you. Don't even wear cleats into the dugout. But this time of year, everybody knows the deal, right? Like, yeah, you're not in the lineup, but if they need you, you're available. And, you know, part of a manager's job is to keep a pulse on his guys and what they need and what they're going through. And even when somebody's

struggling, if you feel like it's maybe a result of them getting worn down a little bit physically, then they need the day off. If they're getting, you know, kind of piled on them mentally and you can see it starting to build, maybe they need a day off. Or the opposite could be, hey, this guy's going through a struggle right now, but he still looks competitive. He's still. It still looks fresh. It still looks like he's fighting through it, which means any at bat or any game could be the game that he breaks out. So I'm just going to keep him in there and ride him a little bit longer.

So, yeah, it's different approaches for different guys who are maybe going through the same kind of stuff. Well, we know Yoron Alvarez is a different guy. He hasn't hit a home run in a while, but still looks like he's had a lot of hard hit contact. Have you noticed anything different with him, or it's just been baseball on a stretch of games where he hasn't gotten one out?

And, of course, we know he got close yesterday. Yeah, it's very much just baseball. You know, he hit a ball the other day. What was it, the second or second hardest hit baseball in major leagues this season? And if he gets a little bit more elevation on it, balls, you know, in the ocean. So, no, I'm not, no real concerns about the approach, no concerns about, you know, is this swing not producing enough, you know, loft or fly balls? he's just at a stage where he's,

everything that he hits hard is either on the ground or a line drive, which is fine. You're going to get hits that way. He's also, you know, you go through stretches where when you're him, when you're the guy in the lineup, when you're the guy in all of baseball that everybody doesn't want to mess with,

they're going to be very careful with you. And oftentimes that results in you getting a lot of walks and not getting anything to hit. But, you know, these are major league pitchers. Sometimes when they're trying to be careful and make pitches, sometimes they do it. and sometimes you get dealt up a little bit and don't get a whole lot to hit.

So, you know, when you go through those stretches, it's just there's a reason that people don't hit 400. There's a reason that people, you know, don't hit 70 home runs. It's because even when you're fine, sometimes it just doesn't happen. Brian Bogusevich was here on Sports Talk 799 games into his Astros career. It has been a struggle at the plate for Dalton Varshow. What are you seeing there? You know, honestly, nothing really stands out as, oh, if they fix this, if he gets this going, he just hasn't really had anything clicked.

The bats have been fine. It doesn't look like he's really chasing anything. It doesn't really look like he's overmatched by anything. You know, honestly, he wasn't swinging at all that well when he came over. I think he was, you know, under 200 for his last 20 games or so as he was coming up to the trade deadline. So just kind of going through a stretch like that, but it is what it is. It looks the same against righties and

lefties. It looks like it's competitive. It looks like at some point it'll break out and be better. But no, you just haven't seen it yet. I feel like Brian, that to Taylor Tremel in the battle of let's see what outfit or wants to stick around and play as much, has done everything he's can. Cam Smith

has played well, but Cam Smith has much been more of a solid position because of his defense. But Tremel, it feels like, has taken a little bit of a leap because we've been looking for somebody to kind of step up and at least say, hey, I should be playing in the outfield five days a week. Yeah, he's been really good. And the bats have been very good in terms of just, you know, swinging at good pitches,

controlling the zone. His bat speed looks really good. He looks fresh. He looks healthy. And this is kind of the trickle-down effect of the Varsho thing. I know a lot of people are looking at them bringing in Varshow and saying, hey, we're getting decent production at center field with Tremel in there. You know, why are we kind of making that trade?

But the trickle-down effect is that, you know, before you were kind of fine with what you were getting in center field and you had really no answers in left field on an everyday basis. But now you bring Varsha in. He's an everyday center-fielder type. He had, you know, lefties, right, he's about the same. So now you can slide Tramel over. So now you have at least that side of the platoon figured out in left field. They're trying to figure out the right-handed side of it. So it's not, you know, necessarily, oh, we made a trade for a center fielder.

That was moving. It was more just we upgraded the outfield as a whole. And it feels like Taylor Tremel, you know, all throughout the course of the season, he's constantly being like the forgotten man and then reminding everybody of, hey, I was playing pretty good before that. And he's doing it again. We saw the opener yesterday before Tatsu Emi got out there. Do you think if you're Joe and you're on the plane right back yesterday,

that's going to be what you're going to have to do with him probably the rest of the year? I think it will be dependent throughout. the rotation, you know, seeing how this starts leading up to it. I think it's kind of obvious that there's three spots in the rotation that they're pretty comfortable with, right? You have Hunter of Lambert, you have Wesnasky, they're all throwing the ball fairly well. They're pretty reliable. You know what you're going to get. And then there's a couple of spots where it's just like, we don't know exactly what we're going to get from Renel or Javier, Emi, obviously, has been up and down. So you're going to try to massage those all throughout, you know, the rest of the season.

And between off days and being able to shuffle the rotation around, and are you getting a deep start from one of those guys before to where the bullpen is a little bit fresh, I think, yeah, I think they're going to try to limit the exposure of those guys, how many times they're going through a lineup. And, you know, the case like yesterday, if you're thinking that a bulk guy or starter type is only going to go through the lineup two times and maybe give you four innings, well, why not play a better matchup in the first inning if you can bring in a left to face a left-handed heavy top of the order.

So, yeah, I think that's going to be something that's certainly on the table from here on out. All right. Before I let you run, I get this question occasionally on the 10th inning show, and my easy answer is Christian Vasquez can't play six days a week. Okay? The backup catcher always gets a lot of the run, and we've seen that with other catchers here and before.

But the record with the Astros with Christian Vasquez is significantly better than it is with Yanardievs, even though the sample size is a little off. Explain it to me. Coincidental? Is there something about what Vasquez is doing behind the dish? And the reason why he's not playing more? It's because he's well north of 30, and the bat's about 205 batting average. Yeah, I think it's mainly coincidental.

I mean, Pristin Vasquez is a very good catcher. It's a very good game caller. There's a reason why he's been around for so long. There's a reason why all the pitchers that he's ever worked with have liked him. I think the numbers are skewed a little bit because Yiner was a guy catching at the beginning of the season when they couldn't do anything right and it had nothing to do with him being back behind the plate. But, yeah, I think, you know, just he works very well with the pitchers, Fasquez, I'm talking about it. And Yiner does a job also, but I think just, you know, he's fallen into a good rapport with a couple of the starting pitchers that have gotten really hot. And when you do that, you're winning more games with those guys and the records going to be reflected in that.

that, but I don't think it's any kind of slight to say, you know, that he's so much better than Yiner, and Yiner is detracting from the guys that he's catching.