The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Brian Bogusevic Joins The Show Breaking Down Astros Batting Woes After Sitting 18-18

Episode Date: May 8, 2025

Brian Bogusevic Joins The Show Breaking Down Astros Batting Woes After Sitting 18-18

11 o'clock straight up here on the Matt Thomas show with Ross. Ross Viery out with you. Matt Thomas is out. His son is graduating from Texas A&M. Congratulations to Peyton Thomas. Dan Matthews hanging out for a little bit longer. Appreciate him and also appreciate Brian Bogussevic as well. Did you get a degree from Tulane, Brian? I do have a degree.

Oh, nice. What was your major? It was like business law. Oh, my God. General business. I'm going to go with business ethics. Okay. What is your consulting fee, man?

I got a lot of questions. I got a lot of questions for you. You want nothing from me other than baseball. All right. Appreciate you joining us, as always, Brian. Good news is we are going to talk about the hitting not coming, but at least they scored nine runs yesterday. So let's start with a little bit of positive.

I asked you two weeks ago, do we think the breakout for Jeremy Pena is here? And you said yes and continues to be the hard hit rates. He's moved into the start of the lineup. Just what have you seen from him, especially relative to the last couple of years, that we are seeing the breakout in real time from Jeremy Pena. He's controlling the strike zone really well. You know, if you can break down hitting into an overly simplistic idea,

it's get a pitch to hit and get a good swing off. And then whatever happens after that kind of you just live with. and he's getting his foot down, he's keeping his hands back, so he's in a good position to hit. He's not chasing, you know, so he's getting pitches to drive, and he's putting good swings on them. That's why they felt comfortable moving him up into, you know, the leadoff spot because he can really control and at bat. And that's where the confidence was coming from when the results weren't there the first, you know, a couple of weeks or so he's hovering around 200 when I'm thinking it's all there. because at bat after at bat, he's got all of the ingredients for having more success. It's just a matter of it coming.

And now, you know, what is it, like 24 out of 25 games or something. And I think yesterday's game was a really good example. You know, he turns on 96 up and in to hit a home run. And then the following at bat, he takes a pretty good breaking ball down in a way and is able to put the barrel on it also for a double. So, you know, it's not like he's cheating to get to velocity. It's not like he's giving up on the fastball to not chase. he's just in a really good spot.

Brian, what was different about Fromber yesterday? What did we see from him that we hadn't necessarily seen from any of the other starts? Well, for him, it all starts with his sinker and establishing the bottom of the zone with his sinker. And he has to get that ball moving with downward action. When it starts coming off the side of his hand and is a little bit flatter, even if it's harder, even if it's 96, 97, but it's run. running flat arm side, that's not a good thing. He started off, you know, he really made the point to get his extension out front that has the ball sinking down at the bottom of the zone.

And that tells hitters, okay, I have to swing at that pitch when it's down. He's not going to give me the mistake out over the plate. He's going to pound that fastball down, down, down. And then not only is he going to get ground balls off of that pitch, but now you're susceptible to the curve ball because it comes out of the same spot, and then he just starts going to work on guys. And it's a bunch of ground balls on the sinker. It's a bunch of swings and misses on the.

curve ball. That is the exact formula that you want to see from him. Establish the sinker down, go to work on guys with the curve ball, mix in a couple of change-ups. And once he can do both of those things, he doesn't have to do anything different. Brian Bogusevick with us here on a sports

talk 790. Let's just go to the weekly Christian Walker update. We keep saying it's going to turn around. Unfortunately it hasn't. And we don't want to invoke the name of his, who Ryan with Mosei Mamreou, but is there a curse at first base for this team?

What's going on over there? Yeah, I wouldn't go so far as to say it's cursed yet, but it's not looking good. You know what? The thing with him is that you can't really point to anyone's thing and say, hey, this is not there. You know, when Jose Abraeu was really struggling, he was overmatched by fastballs. And it was like, oh, man, if you can't hit the fastball, you're in trouble. And for Walker, it's like, you know, he'll get blown up by a fastball, one at bat, but then he'll turn on a fastball or he'll chase.

It's just a guy who's searching and, you know, everybody goes through it and, you know, it stinks when it's at the beginning of the season. It really stinks when it's at the beginning of a season with a brand new team. But, you know, there isn't anything that you can point to and say, like, he can no longer recognize a breaking ball or he can no longer catch up to a fastball. He's just a dude who's in a slump and, you know, he's kind of swimming in his head a little bit. I'm still very hopeful that he'll break out and he'll be fine.

But yeah, it's past the point of just kind of early season adle all level out. There's got to be something that kind of, there's got to be a switch that flips mentally where he can relax. It looked like he might have been coming out of it on the last homestand a little bit. But, you know, now he's kind of regressed a little bit. Again, Brian Bogusovic, Space City Home Network, join us here on the Matt Thomas show with Ross. Bogie, a little bit of a revolving door right now, platoon situation over at second base. You get Maricio Dubon on Monday, then you get Brendan Rogers there the last couple of nights. Would you like to see Joe kind of settle that position of if he's going to go with Rogers, go with him?

If you're going to go with Dubon, same deal. Well, I would love to see it settled, but it's not going to be Joe who settles it. It's going to be the players who settle it. And I would love to see it settled because somebody, you know, just starts. If you start hitting, you're going to be there every day, you know, between one of those two guys. And it just hasn't happened for either yet. You know, the good news is the main reason you moved Altuvae into the outfield. was to get better defense at second base, and you're getting that with both of those guys.

They've both been very good over there. But, yeah, I would like for one of them to settle it by getting hot. And, you know, Brennan Rogers can provide, you know, a little bit more power theoretically. But we've also seen Maricio Devon get hot and just put together some stretches where he's getting a ton of hits. If either one of those guys gets remotely hot, it will be their job, you know, until it's not. But it's not on Joe to just decide on one or the other because, you know, if you can't make the decision, it's probably because neither guy has really taken hold of it. Cam Smith with the day off yesterday. Can you just try to at least get into the mind of a camp smith?

What do you think is going through his mind? What do you think is his head spinning? Is he just being uncomfortable? Is he just having a little bit of bad luck? When you're a young guy and you're struggling and you get the day off, where do you think he is right now? Well, for a guy like him, a young guy still working on, you know, days off are work days, right? Like it's a lot of work in the cage for him still, you know, getting work in the outfield and stuff. But for him, it's extra swings.

It's not just sit down and watch the game and get a day off like you would, you know, when Altuvae gets a day off once every month or so. Because he's still got things that he's got to work on. I mean, it's been made very clear to him by the hitting coaches of what that plan needs to be, you know, getting more aggressive in his appellate. bats trying to work to get a little bit more pre-pitch rhythm, get his hands going a little bit, trying to move the contact point out in front because until he can do that consistently and be timed up to a fastball, nothing else is really going to fall in place. And now even to the fact

that teams have gotten, you know, gotten a little bit of a book on him and he's not going to get the, oh, this guy just randomly threw me a change up and hung it over the middle of the plate and I ran into it. Like teams are catching on to the fact that he's struck. struggling to get the bad head out on velocity. And he's going to see less and less soft stuff that he can handle. So, yeah, off days for a young guy like that are, you know, extra work days. And a bogey with Yordon. I mean, expect him back hopefully sometime in the middle of the week.

It's not a hamstring. It's not a quad. It's not anything like that. But when you see injuries like this with the hand, I mean, is it something that it goes away now, then it comes back later? Like, you know, how do you think that this is going to shake out for? form. Yeah, you know, it's kind of vague on what the actual injury is. They called it a strain or a sprain or something. A lot of times with hands, I think of, you know, you get jammed and your hand kind of blows up on you and you get swelling. That's not the case. That's something that can pop up on any given swing. You know, if this is some kind of a muscular thing, you would think that just giving it some time off, it calms down and then it's back to normal. Hopefully that's the case. And hopefully once he picks the bat back up, it's fine. and there's no lingering effects.

But, you know, you never really know. Hands are such delicate things when it comes to hitting, you know, even just being sore a little bit, you know, something that in theory you think, oh, I can play through this. It doesn't hurt all of that, all that bad. But just being off a little bit with your grip strength can affect your swing, which can really affect, you know, the production that you're putting up. So hopefully the IL stint was overly precaution.

and, you know, what could have been knocked out in three or four days really gets knocked out in 10 days and, you know, it comes back and you've got to get him hot. You know, this offense is not going to be what it can be or what it needs to be until he's healthy and getting going and they've got to have it quickly. Brian Bogussevic continuing with us here on Sports Talk 7-9. This is more of a general question. Brian, this is more for the fans. I see this everywhere.

It's like, fire the hitting coaches. Fire the hidden coaches. I'm like, okay, well, Jeremy Pena's having a breakout season. Jake Myers is looking great. A lot of the production they're not getting is from established major leaguers. But two-parter, what is exactly the job of the hitting coaches? Like how much is it on the players? How much is it on the coaches?

And then just as much as you can from your perspective, evaluating Troy Snicker and Alex Entron. Yeah, you know, a lot of, you know, we think of, you have to think of coaching at the major league level as very different than coaching at, say, youth levels, right? Like, yes, you're still developing players. Yes, you're working on things. Yes, you're teaching things.

But a lot of what coaches do in the major leagues, it's game planning stuff and it's maintenance type stuff on there. There's my dog. You know, they're not... He doesn't like Troy Snicker. Yeah, he hears us talking about hitting and he's ready to go. You know, it's not... They're not building guys swings from the ground up.

you know, that's at A ball and college and high school. They're talking about getting ready to put together a game plan against a certain starting pitcher, or they're digging into video with an established guy saying, hey, this is a video from, you know, late last year, and this looks a little bit different than what I'm seeing right now. It's very minor things. It's very detailed and minute type of things. So I don't think that you can look at hitting coach and say, oh, well, the team's struggling offensively at the hitting coaches.

Like, really, like, what are they doing differently this year with, you know, Yordon that they haven't done in the last four or five years? You know, some of it, you just look at the players and say, hey, eventually you guys are going to have to do what you're here to do and what we know you can do. Otherwise, we're not going anywhere. You know, what is a new hitting coach going to come in

and tell, you know, Christian Walker that they don't already know about him? So I think the hitting coaches are doing fine. It's not bad. You've got guys who are supposed to hit, you know, second, third, fourth, fifth in the middle of your lineup, not doing it. You know, nobody is going to have a productive offense when the middle of their order is not really getting it done.

Yeah, it feels like to me if something were to happen, it would be one of those situations where somebody's got to be the fall guy and then maybe just getting a different voice in the different voices in the clubhouse. Do you think there's value in that, or do you think that would just be a rash decision if the organization did something like that? I don't. I think the firing of coaches and even managers in the middle of the season is just because it's something that you can do because you can't fire players. I mean, it's almost always struggling teams and the players are struggling and what are we going to do? We've got to shake it up. These guys know what needs to be done. It's an experienced team. They've got veteran leadership.

You know, nobody needs to send a message to Jose Altuve. Nobody needs to send a message to Jordan Albrez. They know what is needed from them. They know how to do it. It's just a matter of time before it happens. So, no, I think that would just be, those types of moves are more or less useless in my book. All right. There we go. That's why we bring you on here, Brian, for the hard hitting stuff.

Plus, it's treat time, too. So, I mean, we're going to let you get to your dog, Brian. You guys going for a walk or what's going on? No, we already did that. He's just barking at everything. Okay. So you've got a security system, too, like ours. Anything that moves past?

There you go. What's his name? Van. Van. He's the new guy, yep. All right. Send Van our regards. Give us a couple extra pets just for us, Brian.

Thanks for the time, man. We'll talk to you down the road. See ya. All right. There we go. Brian, Bogus 7. Good stuff with him, as always. Love his perspective on hitting.

And I hope fans will take to heart that hitting coach stuff that we just got to there.