The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Brian Bogusevic on Tatsuya Imai’s Performance & the Current State of MLB

Episode Date: May 19, 2026

Brian Bogusevic on Tatsuya Imai’s Performance & the Current State of MLB

We're going to spend our 10 minutes this week with our good friend Brian Bogussevik of Space City Home Network right now here on a Tuesday. Bogie, I'm going to ask you this. Do you have a funny or interesting or clever or strange rain delay story during your career, whether it be in the minor leagues, college, or in the big leagues? No, I mean, I've got a lot of experience with rain delays. I don't think anything interesting ever happened outside of, so Nashville, Nashville AAA team, they have a new stadium now. They used to have this old stadium that they, you know,

who knows how old it was. The clubhouse used to flood. So you'd have to move everything from the clubhouse out into the dugout as the water just started rising from underneath the stadium. That wasn't really interesting. It just kind of sucked. So you were basically afraid for your life for a lot of that is what you're telling us. Yeah, it was a stadium that should have been condemned decades before that. Yeah. All right. I just want to, because I'm, I mean, do you eat? Do you sit at your, in your chair? I mean, how do you kill 10?

Because if you have a big meal and you're going to go out and play 45 minutes later, an hour later. I mean, you don't want to carry that extra weight out there, right? No, there's a lot of it. I would always eat. It was eating, a lot of eating and just kind of sitting around. Yeah. So I really hope that EMI could have gotten to the five innings because, look, it wasn't a technical quality start, but it was a, and I, you know, a, you know, a. Ross and I've been kind of discussing this, a more encouraging start. What did you see from EMI yesterday that maybe we have not seen in the previous starts? Yeah, I definitely thought that it was a positive start. I think that he, first of all, looked more confident in himself, looked more confident in his stuff.

There was some real, you know, swing and miss aspect to it, especially with the slider. Some of that had to do with just the general shape and break of the pit. A lot of it had to do with the fact that he was in the strike zone more and in, you know, I had an account and in positive situations where he could entice hitters to chase a little bit. I think that just his overall, you know, competitiveness in terms of looked like he was there to get hitters out and not trying to solve some puzzle that he was fighting with himself mechanically or otherwise. I think those are all huge positives. And I think really what I thought was a little bit kind of an under the radar positive is he gave up the two home runs, but it never really scared him off of what he was doing.

He went right back into the zone. He went right back to those pitches and those locations, which is what he's going to have to do. I think, you know, something that he is really trying to understand and work through is, yes, you're facing major league hitters. Yes, it is a step up. up in competition, but no, they're not perfect, and you still have to go after them and you still have to throw what are maybe hitable pitches that maybe they're going to get you every once in a while, but that's just kind of the way it is. And on the whole, you'll be better if you continue throwing strikes and attacking. And I think he did all of those things. So, yeah, certainly a lot more

than his last start. This is definitely something to build off of, and there's a lot of good stuff to take away from it. Last thing about him, and we don't want a soft pedal. this because this is grown-ass $18 million major league baseball pitcher. But if the Astros are going to hang around with this, and clearly the division is going to let them do this for the short term, maybe even for the entire season, he's got to be a part of this. So I'm going to assume we'll talk to Joe later on on the show today,

that he's got to be feeling better. And he probably has had very few smiles since Donning a Houston Astros uniform. So whatever it was, whatever the philosophy was, whether it was not looking at intelligent reports, maybe staying with two primary pitches, which I thought he got a 31 in yesterday. It was at least assigned to say, you know what,

go back out there in five days and build off of that. Absolutely. And there's no workaround to him not being a part of it. You know, if this team is going to get on the right track, if this team is going to try to get back into a playoff picture, it's going to be involved him in a big way. It just has to.

I think that's a lot of the reason why, with the way his minor league starts were going on his rehab stint. They just brought him back anyways because it's kind of like we just got to figure it out and there's no way around it. I do think he was smiling and in good spirits postgame talking to the media, which he hasn't been all season. And another thing, I think maybe the emergence of Spencer Arigetti, who looks like he's a real number two option once you get your number one option back in Hunter Brown,

maybe it eases some of the pressure on himai to go out there and say, okay, I don't have to be a co-aise type of pitcher. I just have to be a better version of myself and contribute and do what he did yesterday, which is just give the team a chance to win. Brian Bogusevich with us here on Sports Talk 790. Brian, did you have an oblique injury ever in your career? No, you've got to have oblique muscles to have oblique injuries. Okay.

Now I'm good. Yeah, so, I mean, now we have Altuve went down with one. Jake Myers, Yiner Diaz. Is this, can you explain? Is this a function? of emphasis on bat speed or the changing of approaches? Is there a rhyme or reason to this? How much of this is bad luck or how much of this is something that's maybe kind of part of

the game today? Because not only here are the Astros is there's oblique injuries all over. Christian Walker's had issues with them as well. Yeah, I think it's just a part of the game. Guys are bigger, stronger, faster than they've ever been. They're more explosive. And to be more explosive, you've got to be a little. bit more tightly wound. And, you know, similar to pitchers are always going to have arm injuries.

Hitters are always going to have muscular injuries, especially rotational. You're just doing it over and over and over and over. At some point, there's going to be some weakness that's going to turn into an imbalance that's going to get exposed. And there's no, you know, you try to do little check-ins with yourself and figure out how you're feeling and stay on top of work. And there's prehab routines and everything, but sometimes stuff just pops up with no warning and it just is what it is. You do your best to mitigate it, but just the way it's trending in terms of building these players as athletes physically, these injuries are going to be around. Yeah, and of course we've talked for years about the pitcher injuries as well.

I mean, is this just kind of the new normal? It feels like there is aware. How do you turn back from this? Guys are going to emphasize bat speed. pitchers are going to be emphasizing spin rate and velocity and all those types of stuff. And I guess it's just going to be the new normal that everybody's going to go out there and they're going to push themselves as hard as possible and then probably get hurt. Yeah, I don't think there's going to be, I don't think you can walk it back, right?

Once you see what the results on the field are of, you know, chasing velocity and chasing spin, pitchers are going to continue to do that. Once you see what the results are of getting. bigger and stronger and creating more bat speed and how it translates to the field, you're going to keep doing it. I think, you know, this is years, decades, who knows, down the road as the game evolves, the strength and conditioning aspect and the biomechanical aspect has evolved really quickly over, you know, 10, maybe 15 years that the way the game has played, the structure of the season,

the roster construction, that stuff hasn't caught up yet. So possibly the way to, you know, work with this down the road is to start maybe having more players available on the roster or changing the structure of the season with more off days. I don't know that's something that they're going to have to do a whole lot of research on and have a whole lot of people smarter than me try to figure out. But it's certainly not going to be convincing pitchers to not throw as hard because that ain't happening. A couple more minutes with Brian Bogus Civic here on Sports Talk 790. All right. So now that Jeremy Pena is back in the lineup, we know he's your leadoff guy for the foreseeable future.

I kind of like Cam Smith in that 7, 8-9 range. I don't feel dropped to 9, bad at 8th yesterday. That feels like until Jake Myers is ready to put the uniform on, and there are some tough decisions to be made about where Cam spends the next few weeks, whether it's staying with the Big League team or going back to get his mojo down at the minor leagues, that low-leverage spot in the lineup may be best for him. Well, yeah, absolutely. I mean, you don't want to keep any more pressure onto him than he's already feeling and putting on himself because nobody wants to break out more than he does.

But if you can get, you know, the top half of the lineup working as it should, and Jeremy really settles things in the lead-off spot and slot guys in behind that. And then, you know, we see what Joe Spott has been doing in trying to play hot hands in the middle of the line of the, and if that continues, Then you just go with Cam down and the bottom third, do what you can to contribute. If it's one for three with a walk and a blooper, great. If you can work a walk and get on base and steal a base and make a play in the outfield, as much as working through mechanics gets you out of slumps, as much as getting your confidence back works you out of slumps, feeling like you're contributing.

There's nothing worse than walking off a baseball field after an 0 for 4. You haven't been on base. your uniform is still clean and you just feel like you didn't even play. So just finding ways to contribute, finding ways to feel like it was a productive day, that can lead to more confidence, that can lead to better swings, that can lead to working your way out of a slump as well. And they've just got to continue to try to put him in situations to where he feels like he can contribute and be part of the team. Last question. This is a captain obvious.

You know, Lance has gone up, down, up down. It feels like, and he'll start. tonight that if there's anything that's going to get his mojo going, it's probably two or three consecutive starts where you go out there and go, all right, it's his turn in the rotation, I know what I'm getting. It still feels like that fans feel this way. I don't know how you feel it. You don't know what you're going to get when Lance takes them out every fifth day at this point.

No, it's been very up and down. I thought he was good in his last outing, the outing before that where he had the fingernail thing. I thought he was pretty good before the fingernail, and then it was bad after the fingernail. There's just not a ton of margin for error. You know, he's basically using all five or six of his pitches from the first inning on. It's a lot of movement-based, which he's got to be able to command pitches going in every direction and up and down. So there's a lot going on.

But when it's right, it works. I think going into this start today, if you look back on what happened yesterday, in my it was ahead in the count and then sliders below that's what really works for him and if lance can use you know the sinker the change up the cutter the stuff that stays in the zone to work ahead his curveball will work against this lineup it should be a pretty straightforward approach that that does play to his strength spin ahead in the count will get a lot of swings and misses but yeah a couple a couple good ones in a row for him to settle in and feel like he's really you know executing his plan will be good i I like to see him be more aggressive. It feels like sometimes he tries to be perfect from the very beginning, and then he'll work his way back into the middle of the zone. I like to see him to the opposite where I'm just going to fill up the zone to begin with, and then as I start feeling good, I'll work my way out.

So a little bit more aggressive at the beginning is what I'd like to see. Great, as always, friend. Thanks for the time. I look forward to watching you this week on Space City. Appreciate the visit. We'll do this again back in our normal spot next Wednesday. All right. Thanks, guys.