The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Brian Bogusevic Joins The Show After Injury News Regarding Ronel Blanco

Episode Date: May 28, 2025

Brian Bogusevic Joins The Show After Injury News Regarding Ronel Blanco

Sports Talk 790. It is the Matt Thomas show with Ross. We spend 10 quality minutes with Space City Home Networks, Brian Bogus Sevick. Brian, I don't know if you and Josh Redick are in a fight for best suit wearing during competition. Whatever he wore yesterday, he took the small lead on you. What's going on with that? I didn't see. Well, he's got a bigger bankroll than I have, so I'm at a distance. Oh, okay. I see what you're doing. That does make a little bit of sense there, but yeah. Let's get to the news. Ronel Blanco, really no surprise at this point. And you go look, you're not, you played outfield, so it's not necessarily a situation.

But you've got a lot of friends at a pitch. I always you've been on teams before. Has this spin rate stuff, has this new wave of baseball learning, are we hurting these young men's elbows a lot sooner, more so than we did maybe even 15 or 20 years ago? I think the answer is like it's like an all of the above thing. Yeah. You can't look at how prevalent elbow injuries are and have become, you know, the last, you know, pick your number of years and not say that there's something going on.

I mean, it's a combination of, number one, guys are just bigger and stronger than they ever were. You know, you look at the size of what a major league pitcher is now. there's so much stronger and that just equals more force, more stress on the body. You're maximizing every pitch. There's no there's no pacing yourself to try to, you know, save something for the later innings. Every pitch is maximum effort, maximum extension, you know, optimal spin. Guys throw more breaking balls than ever before.

Does that put more stress on an elbow? I think all of those factors combine and just how, how, how, quickly the ramp up has been. I mean, pitchers now look completely different than they did, even, you know, when I first got drafted. You know, 93, 94 used to be, you know, pretty good velocity. Now that's, you know, the bare minimum. And it's happened so fast. And the one thing that hasn't changed is, you know, the construction of an elbow.

It's still a UCL holding together the bones. And there's a lot of stress put on that, you know, ligament. And the sports medicine, I guess. or the rehab or the prehab, I guess you would need to do, has not kept pace with all of the things that we've done to try to maximize these pitchers. Brian, here's the reality. The NFL has downgraded the role of running back in terms of giving them big contracts, drafting them early.

Their shelf lives with teams are greatly reduced because of the wear and tear that running back's taken. Now they drop from, say, season four to five. if the pitchers don't address this as a fraternity, you're going to not see big money long-term contracts spent on these pitchers because the perception is going to be from these owners, these general managers is at some point every major leaguer is going to have to miss some period of time with some sort of elbow injury. So I would like to see the fraternity of pitchers start to say something about this

as compared to just saying, well, it's just a freak of nature because we're just seeing guys dropping like flies, especially here, but all throughout baseball over what has turned out to be a rampant increase in these Tommy John elbow surgeries. Yeah, I mean, it's almost, you know, just kind of, you know, assumed going into a career or assumed going into a contract with a pitcher that at some point you're essentially going to miss between one and two seasons with an elbow injury. I mean, there aren't many guys that come out of it unscathed. And you're right.

I don't think it's, I think it's different from a running back in that it's not necessarily that we've devalued what that position is. I think it's more devalued the life of the contract because of, you know, factoring in missed time. So it's, it's an interesting concept of, you know, should pitchers go out there and start seeking more upfront immediate money and not trying to do the long-term contract and getting rid of some of that unknown, you know, that's, that's a, assuming risk themselves. And as players, you know, we've been taught forever that you don't want to do that. You want to lock in as much long-term money as possible. But could they make it up by going for, you know, the high AVs? You know, if you're an ace type pitcher on the free market, if you're saying,

hey, what will you pay me for one or two years? Teams that throw huge money at you, you know, assuming that this is not going to be the year that you get hurt. So there might be a shift change at some point of some of these guys seeking out bigger immediate money and, you know, the team's offloading the risk that way. But yeah, you're certainly right because, you know, you can't have, it's such a small window of earning power. And you just don't want, teams certainly don't want to be paying players that aren't playing. And guys, players don't want to have their prime earning years missing. If you look at Renal Blanco, like the timing of this, I mean, obviously you put in the team concept and it's a huge blow for the season. But for him, you know, a guy who had finally established himself in the big

league had a huge breakout year last year. He's not to arbitration yet. He's not even in his big earning years yet. And this is a guy who is an older sign later to the big league's guy. Like these are his earning years that he's now sitting on the shelf. Brian Bogus-Evick with us here on-sports talk 790. Shifting gears to the on-field play, Jose Altuve. How could we not talk about him? 12 hits in his last five games. What are you seeing out of him? Well, Jose Al Tuvei. That's kind of what it is.

I mean, it's amazing. You think that over the course of a hitter's career, typically guys, you know, the ups and downs smooth out and you get more of a steady thing. He's just been, he's been streaky his whole career. We've seen even when he's at his best, you know, there might be a couple of games of Ofer's right around the corner where it's like, man, where did this come from? And then he goes, you know, 12 for 15 in a couple of games. I think in terms of what is it that has kind of snapped him out, a lot of the things that I saw from him when he was

struggling, very similar to the things that Yainer Diaz was struggling with earlier in the season. And it's just contact point backing the ball up. You know, you get very aggressive hitters. When they struggle, they resort to what has always made me successful. And for those guys, it's swing. Swing more, swing sooner, swing more often, and I'll just eventually start getting hits. You could see the tide turning for Altuve midway through the Tampa series, had a couple of base hits up the middle. Early in the Mariners series, he had a sack fly to right field. So all of a sudden, the ball starts going into the middle of the field. That means that the contact point is backed up a little bit.

when all of a sudden you're in, that contact point backs up, the swing stays in a better place, and now you start getting some elevation, now those balls to the pole side aren't hooking foul, they're staying true. And, you know, that's all it is for Jose. And once you feel that, that's a thing that you have to feel as a hitter. And once you feel that and are comfortable with that, it can turn this quickly because you're not necessarily working through mechanical things. You're just trusting where you have to let the ball travel to. And keeping with guys that are turning it around the plate, Christian Walker, we've been talking about all season long.

Have you just seen a light bulb go on with him, or do you think it's just some bad luck that is turned? What's going on with him as well? He had the walkoff, of course, on Sunday and then a home run, two-run, two-run, yesterday. Yeah, he looks like he's maybe exhaled a little bit. I mean, he was fighting. I mean, look, when you see a guy start shaving beards and mustaches

and pants up, pants down, like, they're just trying to find something. Maybe that's it. Maybe it's the beard or shaving the mustache. Keep a shave, yeah. You know, when things aren't going well, nothing goes right. And you can go up there and, you know, you're facing a pitcher who's maybe spraying the ball all over the place, making mistakes down the middle, getting behind the count.

And then Christian Walker steps in and it's like dot a fastball on the corner, dot a slide around the corner in your O2. And you could see these at-bats where he would go, up there and a pitch or two in, he was like, oh, man, here we go again. And I think with the walk off the other day, he finally got the mistake, right? He got the O2 pitch that just leaped back into the middle, and he didn't miss it. And then last night, he gets a pitch to hit and he doesn't miss it. So, you know, once those things start to happen, and you can say, okay, now I feel like I'm putting in the work and I'm getting myself right. Now, you know, the baseball gods aren't against me anymore,

and I'm just kind of, you know, I'm going to get a mistake. Or if I stay in the fight, I'll give a pitch to hit, you can relax a little bit. And, you know, knock on wood, it looks like he's feeling that way a little bit. Because from a straight-up hitting standpoint, it doesn't, you know, there's nothing wrong with his swing. His mechanics look fine. He's been swinging at better pitches. It's just been like everything's piling on at once, and it seems like he's starting to get

out from under that now. Brian, for I let you go. Not that it was a must-win series or life would have been over, but the feeling around the clubhouse probably had to improve knocking off Seattle 3 out of 4. You made up some ground to them. They could have come in here, you know, one 3 out of 4, swept the series and really left feeling pretty good about themselves. Instead, you know, after they won that impressive series in San Diego and they took the

Chicago White Sox, they probably are thinking, uh-oh, no matter what we do, we can't get rid of ourselves of the Houston Astros. And so if you're in the Seattle mindset, Astros aren't pitching deep into games. They're hitting has been sporadic. and yet they're right on our tails again. So I kind of hope it's that way throughout the course of summer, but it just felt like to me

that was a beat your chest kind of weekend and hopefully it's got lasting effects beyond just what these next two games have been with the Oakland A's or the Sacramentoes or whatever they're calling themselves these days. Just the A's. Just the A's.

Like Prince and Cher, yeah. I think a lot of the thing with the Mariners is you draw the comparisons to last season for the Astros, like, if you don't let them get away from you, you're going to be in a good position. Because Seattle, you know, they've been fortunate over the last two seasons that the Astros have not gotten off to good starts. And they haven't been able to put them away. And if the Astros can just hang around, I mean, I've not heard this out of the Seattle side at all.

But it's got to be the boogeyman coming, you know, looking over your shoulder for them. Because they just cannot shake the Astros. And look, no division is going to be decided Memorial Day weekend or anything. But if you can just hang around, hang around, hanging around. You know, we've not even seen this offense click yet. And when you're Seattle looking at the Sastro team saying, man, they haven't even played their game yet. We haven't seen them do what we know they can do because we've seen it. And we're only, you know, a game or two up.

You know, we've not given ourselves the advantage that we should. So, yeah, I think it's, you know, not an end-all be-all series, but three out of four. it puts you in a good position to kind of just hang around and work on the Mariners a little bit. Bogey, thank you for the visit. There's always great stuff. And let's watch at 1130 to see what Josh is wearing today because the zoots suit yesterday he put on was unbelievable. So I don't know if we can get you one of those. I'd be happy to help you sponsor that, whatever case may be.

Yeah, I'm going to talk to Calvin Murphy and see if he can hope. Oh, Murph will absolutely let you take the lead on that. Thanks, Boogie, as always. All right. That's Brian Boga Civic with us here on Sports Talk 790.