The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Brian Bogusevic Explains Astros Improved Consistency at the Plate

Episode Date: April 6, 2026

Brian Bogusevic Explains Astros Improved Consistency at the Plate

1116 in the a.m. here on Sports Talk 790. Welcome back to the Matt Thomas show with Ross, without Matt Thomas, with Brian, with us until 1 o'clock here on the show. Appreciate you hanging out, Brian, talking some Astros baseball. How things are going for you personally? You're doing all right? Everything okay? Does anybody care? No. Okay. Okay. Let's move on. It's all good. Fine. I was just trying to be nice. I thought you were going to pour out all your problems and everything you've been going on, but that's okay.

Maybe later. Yeah, maybe later. Maybe during the break. All right, so we were talking, of course, about the Asheros and the pitching and dealing with Sacramento. But let's talk about what we really want to talk about, what everybody's excited about. And that's this offense. We can go micro case by case. Of course, we know Yordon Alvarez has been great.

But just overall, are you seeing just a different philosophy with the new hitting coaches? Or is it just some guys that are playing up to their potential? What overall do you, this has been the key to success for the Ashro's offense? A little bit of all of that, I think the most, the thing that stands out the most has been a real commitment to getting a good pitch to hit. And that sounds overly simplistic, but one through nine guys have been really focused on, especially early in the count, not going after, obviously chasing pitches out of the zone, but not going after pitchers pitches out of the zone. not being quick outs, not being easy outs. And what it has resulted in is a ton of guys on base, a ton of long counts, a ton of high pitch counts for opposing pitchers,

and just a lot of situations where you have opportunities to score runs. And guys individually and the team as a whole, it seems like had gotten away from that a little bit. It had gotten really, really aggressive in the last couple of years. And this looks more reminiscent of some of the teams in the 2017 to 2021, 2021, 2022 range, where it was just a nightmare and a battle for pitchers to get through that lineup every day. You've also been seeing a big uptech, not only just for the Astros, but it's been in baseball in general, is with the walks.

How much do you think that is influenced by the ABS system? Maybe a little bit. You know, the information that Major League Baseball put out before the season started when it was talking about ABS and introducing it to everybody, the strike zone is different. The strike zone is going to be judged differently than it had been historically. So it's an adjustment period for umpires. It's adjustment period for pitchers and hitters also. I think that ABS probably has a little bit to do with players' willingness to take a pitch. in a two-strike count because the philosophy as a hitter was always, you know, don't leave it in an umpire's hands. With two strikes, if it's close, swing.

Because, you know, you just want to take away that element of, you know, maybe having a bad call go against you. But now, if you're pretty confident in your strike zone judgment, you know, a three-two pitch, go ahead and take it if you think it's an inch off because you have the ability to challenge it and be right if you're right. So I think that has a little bit to do with it. I think it's just the way pitching. is moving. Guys are maximizing stuff constantly. Guys are chasing velocity, chasing spin.

There's going to be more strikeouts, so there's going to be more walks with it as well, and that's just kind of the nature of it. I think especially early, you know, off-season throwing programs used to be a lot of playing catch, stretching it out, building arm strength, to then get up on the mound and try to really get dialed in. Most of an off-season training program for pitchers now

is a lot of almost, you know, the pitching version of power lifting, trying to throw harder, trying to get more spin, trying to get a sharper breaking ball. So it's a little bit more throwy versus pitchy. And I think maybe we're going to have that transition in the first month or so. And I guess that means also at the expense of control,

which we're seeing a lot of issues with that. Absolutely. You know, guys are no longer trading. If the tradeoff is 92, 93 on the corner or 9697 in the middle of the plate, guys are choosing 9697 in the middle of the plate. But as you try to really ramp up and max effort and really get behind that baseball, you're going to spray a lot of balls too.