The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Brian Bogusevic Joins After Pena & Alvarez News, Giving His Insight On How The Astros Are Still Moving Forward

Episode Date: July 2, 2025

Brian Bogusevic Joins After Pena & Alvarez News, Giving His Insight On How The Astros Are Still Moving Forward 

All right, let's not waste Brian Bogus' time anymore. Any more than we normally do. Yeah, he's like, do I really have to keep doing this? Bogie, good morning. Your squad is 17 games above 500. Cam Smith and Victor Caratini are making our Hall of Fame bat flips. Do you agree or disagree based on what they've done the last week or so? I wouldn't call them Hall of Fame bat flips.

I think they're good. There's definitely better, more iconic bat flips out there. I mean, you can go back in time. Ken Griffey Jr. is probably the most iconic from what I can think of when I was getting. I mean, you know what I'm partial to? Remember the Kyle Tucker reverse pivot out of the batters box and flip it to the dug? I like that one. Nice.

Were you a bunch of a bat flipper back in the day? I didn't hit enough home runs to be a bat flipper that would be frowned upon. Yeah, probably so. All right. Well, obviously, a lot of the conversation among the Astro fan base is about Yordaun situation and obviously Jeremy's situation. look, you're not a doctor norah the two of us, but just when you're hearing these things, the first thing is get well soon for both of them. And second of all, I would think from a purely baseball perspective, which we bring you on for,

you're thinking about how do the Astros continue to play this well, despite two key cogs. One's been gone for a long time and one just missed the last weekend and probably going to miss some more time. Yeah. I mean, before our show yesterday, I was just sitting around and I was drawing. up a lineup of the guys that are on the injured list for the Astros right now. It's really striking the amount of talent both sides of the ball that are

unavailable. So how they continue to win? I don't know. They just figure it out. And it's a lot of guys picking up slack offensively. You know, it's Victor yesterday. It's Cam Smith another day. It's going to be El Tuve one day. You know, they just kind of do that.

What the pitching has done is incredible. I mean, Hunter and Frumber, you talk about what aces do. I mean, it's above and beyond. It's every time they go out there just absolutely unhittable and the depth that they keep showing, it's crazy. But, you know, at some point, you have to imagine that there's going to be a breaking point, right? At some point, you just lose too much or the guys who are there picking up the slack, get into a funk or something, you know, at some point, the injuries have to stop piling up and you've got to start getting

some guys healthy, which, you know, we don't really know. when that's going to be at this time. Isak Paredes has been leading off the last handful of days. We asked this to Joe Espada yesterday, and he's going to continue to put him in there for the foreseeable future. But when you were drawing up the 26-man roster, even with guys being hurt, I don't think, Brian, that Isac Paredes in the lead-off spot

was necessarily on anybody's bingo card over the course of the year. No, I mean, it's not the prototypical burner that you would think of up at the top. But, you know, really what they've done, it's gotten to a point now with so many people being out and still trying to kind of piece together the bottom third of a lineup on any given day. It's not necessarily about ideal lineup construction of who's the best fit at leadoff, who's going to be our prototypical three-hole hitter or cleanup hitter. It's just let's take the guys who are swinging well, you know, whatever three, four,

or five of those guys on any given day and let's just bunch them together at the top. and then hopefully we can play matchups at the bottom or pick the right guys based on how we feel about their swing right now in the bottom half and have that carryover because there is no right solution when you're down this many guys. There's not many people. There's just not enough guys who fit that prototypical role of whatever spot you're looking for. So let's just take the best guys, try to get them the most at bat, and hopefully the guys at the bottom can put some runners on base for them.

you know, with what the pitching staff has been doing, let's scratch across a couple of runs and hope it's enough. I want to talk about the Jeremy Pena injury real quick. Have you ever had a rib situation like that? And what's the recovery like as far as how much of its pain management, how much of it is wanting to be 100% healed? And especially for someone like Jeremy Panyu, who's not only it's about swinging the bat,

but I mean, if you're a shortstop, you've got to be diving all around the field as well. Yeah, so I've not, I've not done a rib. I've been fortunate enough I've never had a major, like, core oblique type of thing either. But that being said, I mean, I've had soreness in there in those areas. And everything you do in baseball is affected by that area. And I'm not just talking about swinging, throwing. That's obviously rotational stuff.

But, you know, the idea of keeping your body under control to go down and feel the ground ball, you've got to have a lot of core strength. You know, running back on a fly ball and trying to keep your eyes focused on the ball, up above your head requires a lot of core strength. So everything you do, that part of your body is engaged. So if you don't have enough strength to do it, if you're sore in there, it's going to be affected. And you don't want to hear this, but fortunately,

we're at a place where you're only halfway through the season. You do have a decent lead. You just give it time. And, you know, there's nothing you can do with a broken rib like that. You know, you can't tape it up. You can't, you know, compress it or whatever. you just got to sit there and let it heal and that takes time and

hopefully they can get by for however long it is and hopefully a young guy who's in as good as shape as pain you and hopefully he's a quick healer Brian Bogusevic with us here on a sports talk 790 I had to apologize to you Brian a couple of weeks ago I shorted your

your Coors fuel numbers 423 with a 1.198 OPS Oh hey I don't remember who it was, but I can imagine they must not have been throwing some very good pitchers out in Colorado those days. So three hits for a Christian Walker in Corsefield. Seems like he likes it as well. Is that ever like something that entered your mind or the player's mind, hey, hey, I do pretty well in this ballpark because it seems like it's working for Christian Walker at least one game in.

I've never come across anybody that doesn't like hitting in that ballpark. But he's also a guy. He spent a ton of time in that division. He knows those pictures. He's very comfortable hitting there, so it's not surprising that he has a comfort level. Also, what I noticed about his hits yesterday, number one, they were all on fastballs. Number two, he was really doing a good job staying inside of them. He wasn't trying to come around and pull any of those pitches.

And the other thing, most importantly, maybe, is that where they were located. They were middle to down in the strike zone. He wasn't trying to get up on top of those fastballs at the top of the zone. I mean, he set it himself after games, talking about, you know, that fastball. at the top. There's one of two ways that you can do it. You learn how to hit it or you learn how to not swing at it. And if he's going to make a concerted effort to lay off of that pitch and get it down into the strikes, it's just an easier pitch. Even high velocity, it's just easier to drop the head of the bat on a pitch down at your thighs than opposed to up at your letters. So,

you know, maybe that's something that can get him going a little bit is getting on those fastballs. Boogie, when you've been around players that say, oh, I love going to this stadium and hitting, or I don't like hitting this place. Were you one of those kind of guys that said, you know what? I don't like going to Philadelphia. I didn't enjoy playing at Wrigley. Because I remember one of my all-time favorite Astros is Lance Berkman and talk about it at nauseam how much he hated playing in San Francisco.

And the reason why I bring this up is can some guys talk themselves out of having productive series on the road when they already going, having a bad feeling about the venue they're about to play in? Oh, absolutely. I mean, it's the same as how you. you feel about your swing on a given day, right? Whether you're feeling good or bad, your swing's really not that far off and confidence a lot of times will be the tipping point of if you're going to go out there and feel like you're going to have a good day or a bad day and how comfortable you are with your settings, whether it's, you know, a backdrop at a certain place or the

shadows in the afternoon at Wrigley Field or the cold wind blowing in in San Francisco, whatever it is, if you go into a game with a mindset that I don't like hitting in this place. I don't feel comfortable here. I don't match up well against the pitchers, whatever it is. It definitely is going to affect you. And it works the other way, too, when you go into a place like Colorado, and most guys feel like not only is the ballfly, but it's a gigantic outfield. There's hits everywhere, and it's just a great place to hit. For a let you run, and I brought this up with a game with Joe, and I want to get your thoughts on it as well. You've got some pitchers that, frankly, probably a month or two ago were just

lucky to be on a major league roster. Now they're helping. this team put together the second best record in the American League. They're about to get into the last half of the season. Games will mean some more, chance here for the playoffs and whatnot. And is this the same situation as a position player, meaning that it's fun to be on a major league team, but what's it like for a young player who just fought his way on to be good and to stay on this team knowing that,

Colton Gordon, for example, okay, Colton, we thank you for your service, and now we need you to go six innings when you can. I mean, how much more pressure does a young first-year player or a guy that has had a little majorly experience fight through the times of, this is the most I pitched, this is the most high-leverage games I've ever been part of in my major league career? You know, I think if a guy was good enough to get there but not welcoming of a challenge like that, I think a lot of those guys probably would have been weeded out along the way. It doesn't mean everybody's always going to be successful in those situations, but I don't know that, you know, a guy, could be competitive enough to get through the minor leagues, especially with a lot of these guys at the Astros have brought up. These are not high draftics. These are guys who had to produce from day one just to stay on minor league rosters. So these guys have been fighting for their

lives for most of their professional careers. I don't think that any of these guys would come up and not want to be somebody who could be pitched, who could be pushed, you know, third time through the order, up to 100 pitches, go out there and face the middle of the order again. I think they welcome those things. And one of the things that breeds that success as well is that, you know, the Astros minor league system, if you look, you know, over the past, you know, recent history, they win a lot in the minor leagues. You know, they, those guys all won a championship in AAA last year. And that's certainly not the same as doing it at the major league level, but there are stakes. They're not guys who are just out there pitching for their ERA and hoping somebody gets

hurt in the big leagues so they can get called up. These are guys who have been in situations where they're pitching to win games, and there are things, you know, other than run prevention that go along with being a part of a winning team and a winning pitching staff. And I think we've already seen some of the signs that they're able to handle that. And I think the more that gets thrown on their plate, I think they'll be able to handle it too. Bogie, great work as always. Thank you for the visit. As always, we'll talk in next week.

All right, thanks, guys. You got it, Brian Bogusovic with us here. Under the Matt, Thomas Show, Wood Ross. Appreciate his perspective every Wednesday, with you. at 11 o'clock.