The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Brian Bogusevic Joins To Talk At Bats & Yordan Alvarez Injury

Episode Date: May 20, 2025

Brian Bogusevic Joins To Talk At Bats & Yordan Alvarez Injury 

in Tampa tomorrow. Plus, Brian Bogusiv is becoming a major television star on Space City Home Network. Last night, the Astros, how about this? We are sitting here in late May, and that is crazy, Brian Bogusovic. That was the first back-to-back road victories for the Local 9 this year. Yeah, apparently you can do that. You can go out and win two in a row when you're not playing at home. We just found that out.

How about that? You tell me, now, granted, all of us were not in Tampa yesterday, but we've all been to Starbrenner Field before. it's a nice spring training ballpark and they try to put lipstick on the pig but it still had a very gimmicky spring training feel even as we were watching it on your network last night. Yeah, it just doesn't look the same, especially you get some of the high shots and then, you know, there's nothing in the background behind the stadium. It just looks weird. And, you know, in terms of, you know, spring training ballparks, it's about as nice as you can get. And those fields play so differently when it warms up versus early in the spring. I've been down to do some rehabbing in the spring and summer months down in Florida at times.

And it's like, oh, man, the ball doesn't fly like this in spring training. So there's going to be some crazy numbers put up at that field once it really warms up. You know, there was a huge, not a question mark, but a huge bit of uncertainty about Isaac Paredes. You mean, you've had Alex Bregman at the corner spot for all the years, home runs, macho, defense, the gold gloves, the big hits. And we just didn't know because he had been well-traveled, Tampa, Chicago to Houston. Tell me if you remember what you thought of Isok when the trade went down and what you think of him now, that we've seen him wearing Astros gear for the last couple of months. Yeah, I mean, I don't think I've enjoyed watching anybody more this season than Isok Paredes.

He's one of those guys who having the chance to watch him every day, you can really appreciate how good he is. And I knew that the hitter profile kind of matched up, right? A pull-heavy, right-handed power hitter. Obviously, it plays well here at home. But it's more than that. It's how well he works at bat and control the strike zone. It's how often he takes information from one at bat and immediately applies it to a next. that bat. He hit that walk-off home run

on the homestand and basically hunted a pitch that he saw in and at bat the night before off of that reliever. He hit a home run, you know, right before they left at the end of the homestand in his second at-bat of a game and it was

hunting the pitch that he was attacked with in his first at-bat. And it's just like how slowly the game moves, how cerebrally he works his at-bats. You know, you think of pull-hitter and the first connotation is, well, he's going to be super aggressive, he's going to cheat, he's going to swing early, he's going to be, you know, just opening it up and trying to let it fly. He's probably going to chase a ton.

It couldn't be more opposite. It's just a guy who knows what he has to look for in order to make his swing work, and he executes his at-bats as consistently as, you know, anybody I've seen. He has been the power source for this team in recent days, the middle of the lineup. I mean, Bogie, you know you're not supposed to win baseball games on the road when your three, four, five hitters combined to go O for 12 like through the last night. No, and it's weird to why, you know, we do, we look at the box score every day in the post game show. And when it pops up and you see the O4, O4, O4 for right in the middle, it's like, man, how did we, how do we even get by with this? But they've been figuring it out. I mean, a lot of it has to do with how good the bottom half of the lineup has been, how good.

consistently good they've been. And of course, now you got Pena and Parades yesterday bunched up at the top. So you do have a little bit of length from turning the bottom over and getting to the top. But I mean, you're not going to consistently produce runs and consistently win if you're not getting anything out of three, four, five. And guys got to get going. You've got to get Yordan back. You know, having him healthy and in the middle of that somewhere will certainly go a long way. But it would be nice to see the big bats, you know, go off. We need some games where the offense just carries the team. Give these pitchers a little bit of breathing room. You mentioned the back end of the lineup, Cam Smith, the part of that, nine hits in his last seven games. What have you seen from him? Really competitive at Bats. It's hard when you're a young player who's working on things, which we've talked about all the adjustments that he's trying to make, trying to get started a little bit earlier, trying to move his contact point, to go into the game and not be thinking about mechanical. adjustments, right? And if you're trying to take cage swings into a live at bat, like,

you are dead. And he's done a great job of going out there, and he just competes. And it's not always perfect, but he's always going to battle. He's got a pretty good handle on the strike zone. He's working his walks. He's getting pitch. He's not missing mistakes, too. When he gets a hanging breaking ball or a hanging change up like he did yesterday, he's on that pitch and he hits it hard. And he's living off that. He's shooting the fastball the other way. So he has a pretty good idea of what he's able to handle right now. And he's just out there competing his butt off, which is all you can ask from a young player, you know, put in the work early and then just go out there and figure out how to try to how to get on base. Brian Bogusevich with us here on

Sports Talk 790. Yordan Alvarez, still not in the lineup. Just in general, the hand injury, what do you know about what you've heard about it? And how does that exactly affect him and obviously they are trying to limit the possibility of re-injury taking it slow with him. Yeah, I don't know much about this injury. You know, like it's like a strained muscle in the top of the hand. Typically when you think of a hand injury, you know, hand being sore, it's from getting jammed and kind of the inside of your hand blows up and swells up. But that's not what it sounds like he's dealing with.

So, you know, I don't really know. I don't have a good handle on what it is he's feeling. but I do know this. If your hands are compromised, it's going to be really difficult to hit. It's not like I've got a sore ankle or my back's a little tight. I'm going to fight through this. You've got to get it to 100 percent because, number one, you're just not going to be the same.

Your back speed's not going to be the same. Your control of the barrel is not going to be the same. You can very easily fall into some bad habits trying to overcompensate. And, you know, especially when we're only a quarter of the way through the season, And, you know, getting to 90% and then getting out there is not a good idea. You want to get it to 100%. So, number one, he's right and also that he stays right. And it's not something they have to deal with for, you know, 400 at bats moving forward.

When he does come back, and Caratini and Diaz have been the lineup at the exact same time, a lot in the last week or so, one deaching and one catching. Do you think the Asteros should carry that third catcher as a backup plan? Or do you think they should go back to the two-catcher system? And they have got going. You know, I've thought about this a bit. I think they're probably going to go back to the two-catcher system. And Joe has actually been, you know, as willing as any manager to use keratinny

and either a DH role or a pinch hit role, even when they carry two catchers. And I think it's probably wise to continue doing so. He's just, honestly, he's added a lot. He's added a lot of balance to the lineup. He's added a lot of good at bats to the lineup. It's going to be difficult to try to sandwich. you know, trying to force him in there because the DH spot is probably going to be occupied more often than not between one of Yordon and Jose Altuve. But if you can get, you know, at the very least, some decent pinch hit opportunities, I mean, Keratin, he's been, you know, up there with, with the Jeremy Payne's and the Jake Myers of guys who've given consistent at bat.

So I don't think they'll carry the third catcher just because you have to make a move that you probably don't want to make to facilitate that. but I think you can still find ways to get Caratini at bat. Brian, you know, look, this Astro team has won three of their last four, and back-to-back role games talked about, and they're getting a little bit over 500 and still very competitive in the American League West, and now the wildcard chase as well. But if there's been anything that's been consistent this entire season, it's been the fact that the offense has been absent more times than has been present.

So what does the manager do? He shakes a lineup up. He uses different guys. He changes guys in a batting order. You have been in that Major League Club. before you have been going to the ballpark and seeing your name at different spots in a lineup. Does that wear on a player on a team or does the player sometimes have to understand that, hey, look, we've gone through a 30, 40, 40, 50 game stretch.

We're not producing like we think we should. I don't blame my skipper for making these adjustments on a day-to-day basis. No, I think for the vast majority of players, they understand and are fine with things like that. you know, especially when you're given a long enough leash. You don't want to see a manager making panic moves or to feel like he's just kind of, you know, throwing shots in the dark to try to get something. When there's thought behind it, when there's communication behind it,

I mean, everybody in the clubhouse knows who's swinging it well, who's not, who's struggling, who's starting to come out of it. So really what you want to know as a player, you know, when am I playing? How consistently am I going to be in the lineup so I know how to prepare? and then where you're at in the lineup, that really doesn't matter so much. And when you have the leader of the team switching positions and moving from the leadoff spot to the two-hole, now to the three-hole, who I can't imagine anybody is really going to speak up and say, hey, I'm not okay with this moving around when you've got Jose Al-Tube being perfectly fine with it.

And speaking moving around, to wrap up our conversation, one of the things that we've talked about on this show about why this team is as competitive as they are, despite the fact the offense has not been great is because the pitching has been good. The bullpen's been outstanding. The defense, Brian, has been fantastic, especially when you've got two corner outfielders that have never played the position before. You haven't been able to settle on second base. I mean, that's usually a recipe for being a bottom third team in baseball,

and the Astros have kind of bucked that trend. No, and the defense, I think, has really flown under the radar at not just, they've been solid all around, they've been spectacular at times. And, you know, Parades and Walker being added at the time. corner walker is really good over there at first base and a good first baseman makes everybody in the infield better parades has been more than expected defensively i mean we knew he was solid but his feet and his movement in short spaces is even better and in the outfield i mean al-tube's been fine you know he hasn't had any of the plays like he did in spring training where it's been like

oh man that that's kind of a disaster type of play and cam smith i i can't tell you how impressed i am with him. He's gone from, okay, he's getting the hang of it. He looks pretty good out there in right field to he is a very good right fielder. I mean, he covers a ton of ground. He can throw. He's in good positions. You know, he's thinking about where the ball needs to go as he's approaching the ball to get himself in a good throwing position. So, yeah, the defense has been really good. And that's, that's one of the things that has, what the Astros have been when they've been really good has been solid fundamentally on defense. And it really shows up when you get teams that come into town who aren't. And then you notice what it looks like when a team's not very good. And we've

seen a defense this year that has been really, really good. Great stuff. As always, my friend, thanks for the adjustment in time. Looking forward watching you the rest this week on Space City. We'll talk again next week. All right, guys. You got it. That's Brian Bogus-Evick with us here on Sports Talk, 7-Hunter.