The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Brian Bogusevic Joins After Astros Fall 0-1 In Sacramento

Episode Date: September 24, 2025

Brian Bogusevic Joins After Astros Fall 0-1 In Sacramento

All right, let's spend 10 minutes with Brian Bogussevich. Brian, I'm going to be brutally honest with you. I did not watch the pre- or post-game shows last night. Were you on them? I was not. I was not. I don't feel nearly as bad then. Maybe that's it.

Maybe what is your winning win-loss record when you're doing the pre-and-post game shows? Because at this point, three singles ain't going to cut it in Northern California. Yeah, I think we're at the point to where we just start searching for anything. If it's me working late, I guess I have to do my part. But that might be as good of an answer as anything. Yeah. Just really exacerbated isn't the term because, look, this has been a team that has really struggled offensively for much of the season,

much of the because of the inconsistence in the lineup. But how do you balance? Don't change who you are. Be the same type of player you are. But at the same time, Bogie, you're down to a week. you're trying to hold on to some sort of postseason aspirations, and you mustered not much of an offense yesterday against a very mid-Oakland lineup.

Yeah, it's kind of been the story of the second half or second two-thirds or whatever it comes out to be is just, I mean, the offense looking, it's the least dangerous that the offense has felt in some time. And, you know, we've seen very short spurts where it looks like they're putting it together. But on the whole, it just seems like opposing pitchers, regardless of who we're facing, you know, in the division, out of the division, it just seems like the league has generally accepted a plan where, you know, they know how they want to go out and attack this lineup. And there aren't, you know, adjustments being made. and it's just, you know, you're getting beat by what looks like

an inferior matchup on paper. So let me ask you this. This is a tough one. Is there any defeatist mode up and down that lineup? Is it this season wasn't meant to be? I mean, you still largely control your own destiny. You know, you're now down a game in the wild card, but has that started the sink in a little bit?

Can you see it? Or is it still for you and I and Ross here, we're 1800 miles away from that team. We can't make that kind of decision or assessment. Yeah. No, I don't think so. I mean, I think you've got guys in the clubhouse who know as long as, as long as they're mathematically still in it that they have a chance.

And nobody's going to, you know, go and kind of, you know, give up before it's over. But I also think that they, you know, you have to have a little bit of realist in you and realize just, you know, for an extended period of time, it's been a struggle, certainly offensively. There's been, I forget what the number I saw the other day is like 148 or 149 different lineup combination. So that just speaks to how many guys have been in and out of the lineup, whether it be injury or performance-wise.

So, yeah, it's definitely probably said in that, you know, this is not, nothing's going to click and all of a sudden we're going to be an offensive juggernaut. I think everybody certainly realizes that. But you also have enough guys in that lineup. who, you know, we're looking at what is now a five-day season. You can get a couple guys hot in five days, and then they can carry a lineup, and you can score enough runs to get yourself in. It's certainly not out of the realm of possibility.

Brian Bogusevick with us here on 790, and hopefully this is not our last appearance of the season, but Bogie, we're going to look at a macro view of this team in Christian Walker. Obviously, a lot of folks were excited about the replacement at first base. This team has been looking for that solid offensive production, maybe since the last few years of Eurel, Gerell, obviously the Jose Abraibre's situation did not work out. He never was going to be a 285 hitter here. But it just feels like there have been two or three games where, like, oh, he's going to turn the corner.

And then it's a one for 11 or it's a two for 19. When you look at a macro stance of him, what went wrong for Christian Walker this season? Well, I think first and foremost, he got into a situation. You know, when you're a hitter and you start off slow, you're always kind of doing the math in your head of, okay, you know, I started off and I'm hitting 200 after 50 at bat, so I need to do whatever over my next 150 to get it leveled out. And he got to a point to where he was so far underwater. It was never going to get back to where he wanted it to be or where he expected it to be. And that can be a really frustrating thing because, you know, you're sitting all of a sudden, you know, 300 at bats in, 400 bats in, and you've got a lot of season left. and it's already kind of feel like, all right, this is this is a season that's a failure.

And it's just never gotten to the point to where it looks like he's been comfortable with himself. You know, there's been times when the abats have gotten more consistent. And you think, all right, this is the guy that we expected to see. And then it goes away. I think a lot of, you know, the biggest thing from a, whatever, mechanical standpoint or whatever, is just the inconsistency to hitting fastballs and especially elevates. elevated fastballs and it seems like a hole that got exposed and never got closed up. So I think that's probably the one thing that you can look to and say, hey, that's what

needs to be fixed moving forward. But I think just from a seasonal standpoint, it just felt like it got so far away from him early that just from a mental standpoint, it felt like almost a loss season before the season was over. Yeah, you mentioned the high fastballs. And I mean, it feels like, yeah, anybody who's watching these games, Christian Walker has to know it. The hitting coaches know it.

Everybody knows it. And you mentioned, so what can be done? Is that, how can that get fixed? Well, you can look at it two different ways. You can look at it from a mechanical standpoint, right? Find what's causing extra length in your swing or a drop-off in bat speed. Are you muscling up, swinging too hard? Are you getting long in the back and you're not getting the barrel out front

and try to close it up and then be able to attack that pitch? Or you can look at it from an approach standpoint and say, you know, if I can't hit it, I got to lay off of it. and then you just try to make that an area that you're not going to go after pitches until you have to with two strikes. But that also changes the fact that you have to then be more aggressive and overly aggressive to pitches further down in the zone or off-speed pitches in the middle of the zone earlier in your at-bat. So you can try to attack one or the other or a combination of both. But if you can't hit it, you've got to not swing at it. And you mentioned Brian Bogussevica was here on Sports Talk 7.

night. You mentioned just seeming a lack of offensive adjustments because you're right. The Walker, four-seamer, we're seeing. Yiner Dia is still swinging at everything out of the zone. Same thing for Jose Al-Tuvae. I mean, what can be done, especially, there's been a lot of talking. We've been talking about it basically

ad nauseum the last couple of weeks, Brian, about the hitting coaches. And the offense has been bad. And Alex Intron and Troy Snicker, the offensive have been successful with him there, but is it a situation where these guys are not making the proper adjustments for the lineup?

I don't think so. I mean, hitting coaches are very involved in game planning, but game planning has to do, yes, with the pitchers that you're facing and how you want to combat what they're throwing at you, but you also have to make a game plan that's tailored to hitters that you have. And the fact of the matter is that they have a disproportionate amount of very aggressive hitters. And if you're going to ask those guys to go up there and try to be something that they're not, you're not doing anybody any favors. And, you know, use Altuve as an example.

He's always been an overly aggressive hitter. He's always swung the pitches out of the zone at times. But when you have him being bracketed in a lineup by Alex Bregman and Michael Brantley, you can live with that and it doesn't show up as well. But when you have a lineup that as you go further down, there's a lot of aggressive hitters. You know, Jeremy Payne is a very aggressive hitter. Diaz is a very aggressive hitter. And then you get down to the bottom of the order. And now you're talking about young guys that are just trying to survive or just find their footing. You can't ask them to be the ones that go out there and just drag out at bats and fight pitchers

pitchers down to two strikes. So it just seems like there's a little bit of an imbalance in terms of style of hitter. And that's something that, you know, you can't really work around what you don't have. Last question, Bogie. If you are Joe Espada and you are down to five games left of this season. And part of what a clubhouse has to be is it has to be even keeled for 162. But clearly this has been a different kind of clubhouse the last couple of months because there are so many guys going in and out of there. How does he treat the pregame rituals, the film study, the pregame visits, the talk

to the guys of the hotel during the week thing, knowing that if you can put something together here against two subpar teams, you've got a better than 50-50 chance of making the playoffs. Yeah, I think from a pre-game before the game, routine stuff, everything is generally the same. Everybody knows what's at stake. Everybody knows where you're at in the season. I think where it does change is in-game. There's no longer long leashes for anything.

There's no longer, you know, feelings to be accounted for when you're making. making moves. If a guy looks like he doesn't have it coming out of the bullpen, you get somebody going immediately, and it's going to be three batters, and the next guy's coming in. So I think in terms of getting ready for the game, you know, you trust that you have guys who know how to get ready. You have guys who've gone deep into the posting. You have guys who know what it takes to win. They'll be able to get themselves ready. But when it comes to managing the game, that's where it's different. And that's where more of a sense of urgency and maybe a little bit of risk-taking is going to come into play. Hopefully, my friend, we are visiting next Wednesday. Thank you for the time,

as always. All right. I hope so, guys. Thanks, Brian Bogus Evick. And he's with us from our good friends at Space City Home Network, not working this series. We need him for Anaheim, Rossi.