The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Brian Bogusevic Joins After Astros Get Blown Out 14-1 In Game 2 vs Red Sox’s

Episode Date: August 13, 2025

Brian Bogusevic Joins After Astros Get Blown Out 14-1 In Game 2 vs Red Sox’s

All right. So start number two for Aragutti. Now, giving up the two runs was good. The walk count was not obviously. A thought about what you saw yesterday from the starter who, man, has got a lot of pressure on him over the next 40 or so days. Yeah, I would say looking at yesterday and the first start even down in Miami, it's a little bit disappointing that he's not sharper.

You know, there was command issues that kind of ran through both of those starts. from a stuff standpoint, though, it's pretty encouraging. I mean, the fastball velocity, the life on the fastball, those are both good, the shape of the breaking ball, the spin of the breaking ball. That all looks good. So there is reason to be optimistic. You know, the first start, he got a ton of swings and misses. Yesterday, even being constantly behind in the count, constantly having to deal with

runners on base, he was still able to win in the strike zone when he was in the strike zone. So there is a lot to like there. He's just got to get better command, get all those pitches working, you know, his repertoire as a whole versus all of his pitches is just kind of being, you know, one individual pitch after another. So, yeah, not as sharp as maybe we had hoped from a guy who's not coming off of an arm injury. But he looked a lot like he did early on in the season last year. He made a lot of adjustments and was much better late. Hopefully those same adjustments can happen on a much quicker timeline this year. Do you think he's thinking?

thinking about, man, I really want to get back in the groove of these things of pitching every fifth day. I miss so much time. Oh, by the way, my squad needs me because I've got injuries in my bullpen now. I've got uncertainty in my starting rotation. I've got Javier just coming back personally for Spencer. He didn't go through Tommy John. He didn't go through the stuff that makes you miss 12, 14, 16 months, two years. What's going through his mind do you think for him over the next handful of weeks?

Well, he's been around the team all year, you know, besides, you know, at the end of the rehab, when he goes down to Florida to get stretched out. So he knows everything that's been going on. He knows the injuries that have racked up. He knows that this team has been kind of piecing it together, waiting for everybody to get back. So he understands the deal and the optimism of getting these guys back. And maybe there's a little bit of pressure. I think, you know, what we have to remember with Spencer is that this is only a second year.

And he didn't even get a full season last year at that. So he's still very early in the learning process. This was still going to be a big development year for Spencer Arigetti, regardless of getting injured or not. So the idea that he's just going to come off of a long layoff and just immediately go in there and just be, you know, essentially the savior of a rotation, that's pretty unrealistic, you know, for us to expect from him, from him to expect from himself. I think just looking at it through the lens of what he did last year. and learning things in a given start and applying them into the next start. If we can see that growth start over start, I think by the end of the year, or maybe even after four or five starts, I think it'll be the guy that we were hoping

to see coming out of the shoots here. Bogie, this Astros Clubhouse, whatever version has been over the last seven or eight years, has been cool and calm, never so down when things are down, never so up when they're on a hot streak. They've seen a 10-game deficit erased. now in 2025 they've seen a seven-game lead erased. It's hard to measure what that barometer of that clubhouse is because it's so many new guys.

But take us through what you think the general culture is, still with Al-Tube in there, still with a lot of veteran leaders, but yet at the same time knowing that the injury bug continues to hamper this team, and oh, by the way, the team behind them, the Seattle Mariners haven't lost since I think the first of the year. Yeah, I think, you know, just the circumstances of the season have changed. change, right? Everything is fluid throughout the course of the season. Sometimes you're the team getting healthy. Sometimes you're the team getting hurt. Sometimes you're chasing. Sometimes you're,

you're being chased. And, you know, it sounds so cliche to the one game at a time type of thing, but you can't get through 162 games thinking about a big picture constantly. And you can't get through, you know, a decade of seasons like a guy like Jose Al-Tuvae are some of these veterans by constantly being big picture oriented because it's overwhelming. So if you're going to have have a mindset when, you know, you're chasing somebody in the standings of, hey, we just got to go out there, win a game, win a series. You're going to apply that same thing when it's the other way around, and you're the team that was out in the lead that has now been chased down because there's really nothing else you can do. You can go out there and you can worry about what's it going to look

like the next, you know, 40 plus games. Who are we playing in the upcoming week? Who are the Mariners playing? None of that matters. And to get to the success level that these guys have gotten to, they know how to compartmentalize those things. They know how to stay focused on the day-to-day stuff because that's the stuff that really matters. So when it's going good or going bad, it really is the same mindset regardless. Yeah, so we have fans in media, of course, are hanging more on every pitch and every game and the results of that, but you don't think that's necessarily bleeding into the batters box or in the field. No way. I mean, it's the same thing. Whether you're, you know, got a 20-game

hitting streak or you're in a long slump. You're going there. You're getting your work in, you're game planning, you're going through scouting reports, you're doing, it's all about the preparation. And then you go out there and just play. And once you're out there and just playing, what happened yesterday is the last 10 days or what's going to happen, you know, 10 days from now, it really doesn't matter. And it can't

matter because, you know, you've got enough to worry about when you're standing out there in the batter spot. Brian Bogussevick with us here on Sports Talk 790. Why has Carlos Correy been so good at the plate back in an Astros uniform? You know, when you hear Carlos talk about hitting, he's very rarely talking about mechanics. He's always talking about approach, approach, approach, approach, having an approach for a pitch, for an at-bat for a game for a one-on-one matchup or even the team.

And, you know, kind of the definition of approach in my book is, what are you doing to tip scales in your favor? Because the batter pitcher matchup, everything favors the pitcher. It's an impossible thing to do, you know, hitting a baseball in general. The fielders are so good. So how can you go out there, you know, take into account what the pitcher's repertoire is, take into account the game situation, where the defense is playing, what that pitcher's outpitch is, you know, how do you factor all of those things in to give yourself a better

chance? And when you watch Carlos go out there and early on in the count, he's obviously hunting pitches, looking for something that he can drive, something that he can do damage on. Later in the count, he'll try to take away a pitcher's best pitch and not give them that put away two strike pitch. he'll shorten up and a pitch that maybe he takes a big swing at in a 1-0 count. He'll just kind of punch to right field in a two-strike count. So watching him go out there and just execute and just really fight tooth and nail on every single pitch,

you can really appreciate how he gets to the results where we look up after, you know, whatever, it's been 10, 12 games and the numbers have been really good. And I think that is going to start to bleed over into some of the younger players and just the team as a whole. and just trying to have those really drawn out, knockout, drag out type of that bats. Bulgay, we were looking at MLB Network in our studio here just a minute ago, and they just went through the lineup one through nine for the Mariners. Eight of their nine batters have an OPS plus right now of 100 plus. That sadly cannot be said for the local nine,

although there are numbers that are improving, Christian Walker being one of them. How are you going to outslug the Seattle Mariners to this fight to the finish the very last 40 games or so of the season? Well, I think we're going to see, you know, the last six, eight weeks of the season, whatever it is. It's a different version of this team. It's different guys in general.

When you look post-trade deadline, it's different versions of a guy like Christian Walker who finally looks settled in, you know, knock on wood. If Yordon gets back, that changes everything. So I don't think you have to look at it from a big picture of numbers standpoint. Can they hit with the Mariners? Yeah, they can't. And the end of year numbers might not show it. But I think this is going to be a lineup.

And they're going to have to because, you know, the injuries are not going away when you look at what's going on with Josh Hayter. They're going to have to score runs to win games. And now, you know, there's a lot more length in the lineup. There's a lot more guys that can can hurt you in the lineup. And there's a lot of guys who aren't necessarily feeling the pressure of being the one or two guys that it's going to have to be them on any given day. otherwise there's not going to be anybody else to do it.

If Yordon does not come back, forgetting about the offense, what's the best Astros, I guess combined defense and offense outfield? Do you see the rest of the way for the Houston Astros? In the outfield, I think it's probably, you know, we'll leave out the fact of does Jake Myers come back or not. Hopefully he does soon. But right now, it's probably a platoon in center field, Tremel and Chaz, if he can,

get it going a little bit, which it looks like maybe he's gotten it going just a little bit. You know, Cam Smith is your right field or Jesus Sanchez in left field. If you want to try to work, I wouldn't say a platoon, but piecing together, if you want to try to hide Cam from a tough righty and move Sanchez into right field. But it's some combination of those two guys in the corner and then, you know, mixing Altovae in there, if need be. Right. Do you like this?

We're quick. Do you like this? Or I like five-game league guy. My partner over here to my right loves the anticipation of this being playoff time starting right now. Where are you on what we have seen because the Mariners don't lose and the Astros are playing a little bit under 500 these days? Yeah, as a fan, I'm excited. I'm excited for a lot of meaningful baseball. I'm excited for a lot of high-energy games coming down the stretch as a player and as a guy watching a team that he knows wants to make a deep playoff run.

it would be really nice to have the last week or so of the season be signed sealed and delivered and you start to kind of line things up for the postseason. But no, as a fan, you know, there's nothing better than coming out to the ballpark every day and there be kind of being those butterflies and that feeling. And you get that in the playoffs and the idea of maybe getting that for the last month of the season. That would be a lot of fun.