The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Brian Bogusevic Joins The Show & Talks About Inconsistencies In Astros Offense

Episode Date: June 11, 2025

Brian Bogusevic Joins The Show & Talks About Inconsistencies In Astros Offense 

1101 on Sports Talk 7. How any time for us to spend 10 quality minutes with our friend Brian Bogusevich. He is working Space City Home Network series against the Chicago White Sox. And I told Brian yesterday, I said my good friend Shelby is working with him on the broadcast. I said, you knew throw her a curveball. So what did you throw her yesterday? Come on. Give me something that threw her off.

What did you say? You know, I threw at her was that our microphones weren't working on the set. So we had to leave right before game time and run back to the studio. haul over there to to get ready for the show. That was the big curveball that was thrown at everybody. Now, if you were a real gentleman, what you should have done has got one of those guys that has a bike,

you know, those that ride around downtown that gets you from one spot to the other to your parking spot. You guys should have taken. Yeah, Rickshaw. Get you a Rickshaw next time. That'd have been really funny. That's a good show. First segment of the show from the Rickshaw outside of Diken. You'd have gotten some serious TV ratings to get you a little salary bump.

Just telling you, Bogie. This is how we do things. a little outside the box. Hey, had a couple of calls in the first hour, Brian, about Christian Walker. And it's not a slow start. It's a prolonged slump for him offensively. And every time you think he's going to turn the corner, it just goes back into a slump. What are you seeing with your trained eye? Is it pressing?

Is it bat speed down combination of both? Because every time I think he's going to turn the corner, he unfortunately doesn't. It's too bad because I do like him a lot. I do like his glove at first base. I know he's trying. It's not a question of want to, but the results just aren't in right now. Yeah, it's a lot of things. I'll say, first of all, I don't see anything physically.

I don't think it's a, oh, my gosh, this guy got old over the offseason or the bat speed's gone or there's some big hole in his swing that needs to be fixed. I think it's a combination of a lot of outside factors. I know, you know, y'all mentioned earlier the batting ever-tum balls in play. you know, there's a little bit of bad luck, you know, some balls not falling, some good plays being made against them, balls hit right at people. There's also, you know, he's had some pitchers make some good pitches on him. You know, bad luck that way where a borderline pitch doesn't go your way or, you know, the first pitch is a perfectly located pitch that you're not going to swing at, now you're in a hole. And when things aren't going your way, those things in your mind get magnified.

I mean, I remember there being times standing in the batters box thinking, okay, here's my time. I'm going to get a good first pitch right down the middle of that one to hit and get dotted up in your 01. It's like deflation. Oh, here we go again. And you can see some at bats from Christian Walker here or there when something doesn't go his way where you can just see him thinking like, oh, man, here we go again. It's happening again. Today's not going to be the day. I think there is also something to be said about just the Astros' middle of the order in general.

I mean, it's been inconsistent at best in those three, four, five, six spots throughout the course of the year. You know, I think not having healthy, productive Yordon in there, having Yiner being up and down, Jose Al Tuve's been up and down. All of a sudden, Christian Walker can be more of a focus from opposing pitching staffs and how they're game planning for the lineup as a whole. You know, if you've got Yoron hitting in front of or behind him, maybe they're saying, hey, Christian Walker is going to be the guy that works. going to go after. And then all of a sudden, he gets some better pitches to hit. So, you know,

it's usually a combination of a lot of things. And when you're in the situation that he's in, where you're struggling, you know you're struggling, you're pressing because you want to get out of it, all of those things feel even more magnified than necessarily what we're seeing from the outside. So, yeah, I think it's just a lot of things going on and swimming all in his head at once. Last question about him, don't go to some other things. If we were to find out, Brian, bat speed was down a tick, a significant amount. How do you fix that? How could you fix that?

What adjustments would you make? If you found out yourself, Bogie, that your bat speed was down from a year ago, what would you do? Well, the first thing I would do would be look and see if there are mechanical reasons for it, not necessarily strength, age, injury, physical types of things. Is there extra length in your swing that's slowing it down? Or are you trying to do, you know, are you overswinging their first? for not being as quick as you need to be. I would first look at that kind of stuff.

And then what you do is you look for, you know, game plan adjustments, approach adjustments. You look at ESOC Parades. He doesn't have elite elite bat speed, but he can turn on anything that anybody throws at him. And it's just a matter of what pitches you're looking for, kind of how you set up in the batters box, how you're working in at bat.

So bat speed isn't necessarily the end-all, be-all of being able to hit, but it is a big part of the calculus in how you go about approaching an entire bat and how you're going to attack certain pitchers with different repertoire. So even if bat speed is down a little bit, that's not really an end-all, be-all of what you can do at the plate. Brian, Bogus Civic with us here on Sports Talk 790, and not just Walker, but just Diaz or anybody who's struggling. Can you just kind of take us through, like, what is happening behind the scenes right now in your mind? As far as you mentioned, changing game plans and approaches. What is the kind of mental battle that these guys are going through

where you don't want to reinvent the wheel, but obviously what's happening right now isn't working? Yeah, I think one of the biggest battles that you're fighting when you're in a prolonged slump is not trying to do too much and therefore digging yourself into a deeper hole. You know, oftentimes you're not as far away as you might feel. especially, you know, sometimes you'll feel like, oh, my God, my swing is in a terrible spot. And then you go watch the video and you're like, man, it doesn't look a whole lot different from what it normally looks like.

So you don't want to go do major overhauls, you know, unless you absolutely have to. But it's small things. It's maintenance work in the cage. It's watching video to make sure you're not, you know, doing something in your setup. There's kind of low-hanging fruit things that you can fix pretty quickly. You know, oh, I'm a little bit more closed off than I want to be. or my hands are drifting away from my body a little bit. Those are kind of quick, easy fixes.

So you're always trying to stay on top of that with video stuff. And a lot of it has to do with the game planning. You know, who are we facing today? What does he like to do? What is he going to try to do against me? And how can I try to tip the scales in my favor? You know, if you're feeling a little bit long in your swing and you're having trouble catching up to fastballs at the moment,

well, what's this guy's best off-speed stuff? What counts does he like to throw his off-speed stuff? stuff. When can I hunt something soft out over the plate that I can use the whole field and not necessarily have to turn on high velocity? So doing things like that that can maybe get you going a little bit because, you know, what you perceive as happening when you're struggling, oh my gosh, this guy made a pitch against me, I'm screwed in this at bat. You brush those things off very quickly once those balls start dropping in and all of a sudden an 01 count is like, okay, he made his pitch. I'm going to get him on the next one. So it's just about trying to play these

little mental games and almost tricking yourself into thinking, okay, I'm fine now. Because once you think that, you usually are. Do you think at this point, maybe Walker and some of these other guys are just like, get me to the All-Star break. Like a mental break, some days off and some rest and relaxation to kind of just reset for the second half of the season? It can help, you know, a couple days off, a couple days away from it to just kind of

decompress. But also, you know, you can get a fresh start without necessarily. having to have that natural break in the season. If all of a sudden you have a good series and you can say, okay, from this point going forward, what is my season? That's as good as a restart as you need. If you can look, you know, at once you get to this point, 200 at bats or so, you know, if you're in a hole, you're not going to dig your way out. Like, Christian Walker's not going to hit 300 this year. But he can look and say, hey, starting on, you know, June 15th forward, I hit 300 with an 850 OPS. and just kind of play those games in your head.

So, yes, any kind of a refresh, restart is helpful, but it doesn't have to be necessarily a break in the schedule. Ball Gia, the Astros are in the midst of a 13-game stretch of consecutive games without a day off or going back to a six-man rotation. Are we – should we be further preparing? Should Major League teams further prepare for the eventual rotation to go to six more times and not? And the biggest benefit, obviously, is keeping your starters with the extra day arrest. The biggest negative is you're down an arm in the bullpen.

Yeah, I think teams are coming around to the fact that if not using it on a very regular basis, being able to go to that six-man rotation at times. It's just with the amount of injuries that pile up, first of all, you have to have the depth in the organization. So you might as well use it. and also any mileage that you can take off of your guys is probably worthwhile. There's always the balancing act of, you know, if we're one short in the pen and we get a short start, how do we make up for that? But, you know, that's the manager's job.

The manager can figure that out. The pitching coach can figure that out and you kind of have these swing guys that can go back or forth. But, yeah, it's quite obvious now that at some point during the season, you're going to have to go to a six-man rotation. At some point during the season, you're probably going to have to dip into your you know, eighth, ninth, tenth guys in the depth chart. So I think we're going to see teams start signing, developing, trading for just these gluts of starting pitching because you're going to need them at some point.

You know, going into the season, oh my gosh, how are they going to find endings for all these guys? Trust me, you'll find them eventually. And I think teams are just finding that it's just going to be worthwhile to start stockpiling innings. A couple more minutes here with Brian Bogussevich from Space City Network here on the Matt Thomas Show at Ross. I am frankly surprised how much second base Jose Altuve is playing.

Are we going to see more of that because the spot has not been offensively a good spot in the fact that Melton's been playing some left field, you'll get Yordon back eventually, you can throw Dubon out there. What is your take on what you've seen so far? And if you were to get your crystal ball out, how much second base will Jose play the rest of the season? Well, yeah, I think there's a lot of things that play into it. First of all, I think the coaches have done a really good job this year. With all of the moving pieces defensively that they have all the different guys in the outfield mix,

the rotation at second base, they've done a really good job maximizing whatever they're doing on that day. They have a really good feel for, you know, what the matchups are with the pitchers and who should be where. So I think we're going to keep seeing guys moved around. The biggest question is when Yordon comes back, what does that do? How much outfield is he going to play? Is he going to occupy that DH spot all of the time? I do think it is a huge weapon, especially on the road, when you can go Melton, Myers, and Cam Smith in the outfield.

That is a really good defensive outfield. And if you're playing somewhere that has a lot of space out there in the outfield, it's a pretty big advantage. So if that results in Jose moving to more second base. And look, until somebody, you know, until Marisa O'Bahn or Brendan Rogers goes over there and starts consistently hitting for an extended period of time, it's going to be a rotation and moving El Tuve in and out of the out of the out of DH to second base is going to be part of that.

But I can foresee a scenario if it comes to this where if Yoran is occupying a ton of DH when he comes back and we're trying to get these three outfielders mixed in or DeZenzo once he comes back into the mix of Jose playing more second base just based on what you're trying to now maximize from an offensive standpoint. And speaking of those guys, you mentioned the outfield. Another week of sample size with Jake Melton, what you're seeing from him at the plate, and then Cam Smith as well. And I thought over the weekend that a bat where he knocked in those two runs was a great at bat from him,

seeing the cutter outside and then sending it the other way, knocking in two. Yeah, I think, I think, you know, from a mountain standpoint, the tools have always been there. Everybody's really always raved about the physical tools, speed, power, the defense and everything. It's always, the question has always been, how much contact is there going to be? How well can he handle the strike zone? He's done a pretty good job. I know he's struck out some, but it's not like these overmatched blow your doors off type of strikeouts. He's battling. He's seeing pitches. He's laying off of tough pitches, getting pitches into the zone. And that's a very good sign. I would have to imagine that the asteros are pretty pleased with how he's handled the strike zone

since he's been there because that will allow the tools to play. And, you know, what he brings athletically is pretty impressive. If there's, if there's enough contact there, there's going to be a lot of tools to play. And, you know, from Cam Smith, he just continues to progress. I mean, the adjustments that he's been asked to make on the fly at the big league level, his first time seeing major league pitching, it's been pretty amazing of what he is now versus what he was at the beginning of the season in terms of his setup, his rhythm, his ability to get on fastball, his ability to turn on pitches, you know, where are this contact points there. So it's been a lot of, of really good developments at the big league level, which is really difficult things to do.

Boggy, great stuff. He's always look forward to catching you and Shelby on TV tonight. Astros and White Sox game number two. Thanks for the visit, and we'll talk again next week. All right. See you guys. You got it. That's Brian Bogus Civic every Wednesday with us in 11 o'clock right here on Sports Talk.