The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Brian Bogusevic Joins The Show After Game 2 Win vs Rangers

Episode Date: September 17, 2025

Brian Bogusevic Joins The Show After Game 2 Win vs Rangers

Number two of the Matt Thomas show with Ross. Ros, me already out with you. Matt Thomas is out. Chris Cordy is here hanging out. And right now, our weekly Wednesday guest at 11 o'clock, as everybody knows, is Brian Bogus Sevik. Pleased to be joined by him. Bogey. First of all, actually, let's start right off with this Yordan thing. Can you explain to me why Home Plate was so slick and why it looked like there was a

slip and slide down there for him to get hurt? You know what? It's kind of always that way. You see guys slip all the time, and, you know, it's kind of like damned if you do, damned if you don't. You don't want Jordan sliding your wrist, you know, jamming your knee into the batter's box. Badders box is a little bit harder than the field, you know, sliding into second base or something. But at the same time, you're running full speed and you step on home plate and you get,

you see guys slip all the time. And that just, that was nasty one. Like there was a good replay, you know, right in on his foot. And you saw, you know, go all the way over. on it. That was a nasty one. We had Joe a spot on yesterday. He talked about like guys towling off home plate or something. Like can you explain that

to me? Like is that something guys hitters do that before the first inning or something like that? Because the field's all wet obviously from the grounds crew wetting wetting everything to start the game. Yeah, they spray down the battered boxes and everything and obviously home plate

gets wet but it'll get wiped down. You'll see throughout the course of the game the umpire will come out and wipe it down catchers will kick the dirt off of it. It's just, you know, it's kind of like a necessarily serious evil, right? You've got this flat, slick, hard surface right kind of in the middle of the action. It's not ideal. I'm sure Major League Baseball has explored better options.

But, you know, if you change the material and then somebody steps on it and their cleat catches in it and they, you know, roll an ankle or twist the knee on top of home plate, then you're going to have everybody screaming about that too. All right, Bogie. between the lines of what Joe Espada said yesterday. Is there any hope of perhaps your not? I mean, it feels

like with two weeks left in the season, we're not going to see back in a regular season game, but do you think it's possible? Deep playoff run, he could be back? I think it's possible. I don't know if it's likely, but I mean, anybody that's played basketball, watched basketball,

covered basketball, you see these ankle injuries all the time, and they're you know, there's about as wide variance on an ankle sprain as any injury you can have. And once the swelling goes down and the pain kind of subsides, you know, then you can figure out more of a timeline how long it's going to take to strengthen it up. And you see sometimes guys bounce back in, you know, a couple of days or a week or sometimes it's weeks into months.

So there's really no way to tell right now. But, yeah, I think there's probably an outside chance that it's possible, but, you know, to put a percentage on it, who knows? These things, you have no idea when a guy rolls an ankle. You as a former hitter, how much does the ankle matter in the box? We know, obviously, out of the box running the bases, you got to have a good ankle. But how much does that affect the swing? How much does the ankle matter there? Yeah, actually, probably more so than it does running.

You know, running is straight line. You're up on the balls of your feet and you're kind of under control. When you're talking about hitting in the batters box, there's a, you know, it all starts from the ground up. There's a lot of force put into the ground. You're digging your cleats in. There's a lot of torque. You have to really like break through the dirt as you turn and transfer all that power. And if your ankles are weak, it's, you know, certainly going to affect your swing from a power production standpoint.

It's also probably going to affect you mechanically as you try to overcompensate. So, yeah, I think, honestly, it will probably be easier to get back into a scenario where you can run in a straight line decently earlier than you're talking about being able to take 100% full speed swings. Brian Bogusevick was here on a sports talk 790, and that's all depressing. So let's get into something a little bit more uplifting. Zach Cole been pretty good for the Astros over three yesterday. Before that, he had the big home run as he replaced your. Jordan Alvarez. What have you seen from him? And I was especially impressed by the home run where it was the four seamer top of the zone where pitchers liked to pitch and he got around on that one.

Yeah, that was actually, that was a good pitch. That wasn't a mistake that Jack Leiter made. And Jack Leiter was in a groove and had some good stuff. So, you know, you start seeing a guy who can get on top of somebody's best pitch at the top of the zone. It's pretty impressive. He's got tools. I mean, he's bigger and stronger than you kind of think he's twitchy and explosive. He's got really, really good backspeed. He can catch up to a fastball. I think the thing that I've probably been most impressed about, though, is, you know, the hits that he's gotten that aren't the home runs.

The RBI base hits, shooting the ball the other way, he's handled some at back pretty well, getting down in the count, fighting back, laying off of tough off-speed pitches. is you know, sometimes you think a guy in that situation, a young, a young hitter whose main tool is power and bat speed is going to come out there just hacking. But it's been pretty high quality at bat, which, you know, gives you more hope to maybe this is somebody who can be helpful throughout the course of a couple weeks and into a playoff push. And who knows next year, rather than just, hey, this is a guy who was swinging a hot bat at the minor league. let's ride it out for as long as we can up here in the big leagues, you know, and then we'll move on. The big question, Brian, we've had from a lot of folks, you know, just bounce around town. People will go, hey, what do you think?

Do you think the Astros make the playoffs? You think they got any chance, all this kind of stuff? And my answer I'm giving to them now is this is the playoffs, right? I mean, like, with what Seattle's doing right now, 10 in a row is absolutely stupid. But we'll see what the Astros can complete the sweep tonight of the Rangers. But Maders will play another game tomorrow against the Royal. you'll know where this thing is. Are you a game back? Are you, you know, two games back, whatever, going into this weekend. But man, you talk about the importance of a series.

How crazy is this weekend going to be with Seattle coming in here? Basically, they're tied, season series tied five and five. I mean, this is the playoffs right here. Yeah, this is the real deal. This is every pitch matters, every inning matters. There's no, you know, we spend six months talking about the big picture of baseball and things will level out. and you just keep making the right play and you'll be fine over time. This is like trust your gut, take some chances, roll the dice,

and whatever you have to do. I mean, you can just tell by the way the games are being managed. This game, this series with the Rangers, on both sides, you see the amount of moves being made, pitching changes being made, you know, both managers playing matchups from a pinch hitting standpoint, guys coming in and out of the lineup on a day-to-day basis. This is real baseball.

This is playoff baseball. and I mean, you know, Joe Espada essentially emptied the clip yesterday and did everything he could to secure that win. It took every bit of Brian Abray. You know, is he probably not available today? Yeah, sure, but it doesn't matter because you had to get that game yesterday, figure out today, today. So, yeah, I mean, it's playoff baseball started this week here in Houston. Yeah, and what do you think the mood is around it? We know that's been a lot of veterans in that clubhouse and a lot of guys who've been through these types of war.

and they did win the last two games. But it just feels like from an outside perspective, the hits just keep on coming with Yordon going down the way that he did. Seattle just does not lose. How do you think things are going there just in between the guys? You know, it seems pretty steady. I mean, you have plenty of guys who have gone deep into playoffs, plenty of guys who have faced this kind of pressure.

And even the young guys that have come up through the organization, they've been conditioned that this is eventually what. it turns into. This is not surprising for anybody. When they, when these guys come up through the Astros organization and they think about playing in the big leagues, they think about playing in the postseason. So it's not really sneaking up on anybody, but you know,

it's a strange thing to say, but having lost so many players throughout the course of the season, you know, when Yordon goes down, obviously it's a huge blow and you could just tell by how quiet the stadium got and everybody knew how serious it was. But it almost felt like it's just like, oh,

you know, here's another one. And it's almost like everybody's so kind of exasperated with how many injuries there's been. It's almost just, yeah, we'll just keep doing what we're doing. It almost doesn't have that much of effect because they've had to deal with it over and over. If this was a team that was completely healthy all throughout the season, and then you get dealt this big blow, it would be a little bit more shocking than kind of what has been felt this last week. You know, back in the second week of September, 2023, Brian, there was a guy named Evan Carter that got called up by the Rangers

and got red hot for them and was a big part of their postseason run. Can Zach Cole be the Astros version of Evan Carter here? Yeah, I think there's actually probably a lot of similarities between the two just in terms of, you know, the positions that they play, kind of their game, the power speed combinations. and it's, you know, it's not uncommon to go down into the farm system, find one of your big prospects, guys playing well, and try to make them the X factor. That's what Evan Carter was. It's kind of a different story with Zach.

I mean, he was completely off the prospect radar. This guy wasn't in spring training. He was down, you know, I think around 20 in terms of the prospect rankings coming into the season and repeating the level of double A going into this year. So it's been a more out of nowhere. thing, but yeah, certainly the same scenario of we've got a guy who can probably help us in some way

and we're going to go and we need every bit that we can get out of the organization. So can it be the X-C-C-Cactor? He's already been the X-Factor. He's maybe not single-handedly, but been a huge part of two wins that they really needed. And what I like about him too, Brian, is even on nights where he's hitless, he works

a walk. You know what I mean? Like he's, he's finding ways to get on base for you. And that's what this team has needed desperately the last couple of weeks. Well, they need people who can affect the game. And he's done that. And, you know, it's been obviously the big swings of home runs. But yesterday he had a plate appearance where he walked.

He tagged up from first to second on a ball to right field. Then he tagged up from second to third on a ball that was like medium depth in center field. He didn't end up scoring, but he turned, you know, just a walk with nobody on base into a legitimate run scoring opportunity. And that's what they need. As much as they need a guy who can come up and provide a little bit of juice to the lineup, just give me as many guys as we can in that order who can, you know, get it rolling a little bit. All right.

Brian Bogus-Sevick, weekly Wednesday guest here on Sports Talk 790. Bogie, we appreciate the time and insight as always. Talk to you next week. All right. See you guys.