The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Brian Bogusevic on the Astros Sudden Slide After Losing Three Straight

Episode Date: August 19, 2026

Brian Bogusevic on the Astros Sudden Slide After Losing Three Straight

is the Matt Thomas show with Ross. 11.03 on Sports Talk 7-Aarney. We got shut your bum ass up and ain't nobody got time for that coming up. At about 25 minutes, Ross is off. We look forward to having you on this program all throughout the course today at 713-212-5-790. But right now we spend 10 quality minutes with our friend Brian Bogusevick of Space City Home Network. We've spent the first hour and really Brian a lot of the season, talking about a team that is average.

And 63 and 63 is definitely the definition of that. What's that, and I mention this, when things are going well, it's hard to criticize. When things are going wrong, you criticize every day. For Astro fans, for you as an analyst, for me as a talk show host, this has been just an an unsettling roller coaster ride, has it not for you as well? It has. And 500 baseball isn't 500 baseball, right? It's not just winning two out of every four steadily, right?

It's the ups and downs. And the frustrating part is you see throughout the course of the season times when everything is clicking and you look really good. Or the offense is really clicking and you say, okay, we got that part of it going. And just these different facets of the game where at any given time is plenty good enough and you get that kind of tease and that carrot dangle that, hey, if we just put this all together, we're going to be fine. but then you look at it on the whole and there's enough downs to counter those ups and you say, okay, we kind of haven't really figured it out for a long period of time and really put it together. And that's the frustrating part is that you get a taste of it and then it kind of disappears at times. So last night, the pitch count for the Angels, especially among the starter, he was good.

I mean, but again, nothing to be thinking of a future Cy Young candidate. But here's the problem yesterday. George Clausen strikes out seven, walks three. So doing the quick math on that, there's a certain number of pitches associated with that. He goes seven, Brian, with 86 pitches combined. That means of those 10 bat played appearances, there were a lot of first and second pitch swinging. Why has this become such an issue for the Astros the last couple of weeks? Well, they're a very aggressive team to begin with.

You know, there's a lot of guys who it's just in their niche. Jeremy Pena, very aggressive hitter. Jose Al-Tube, been an aggressive hitter for 15 years. Yiner Diaz. It's just their style. And you know, you try to go through times when, you know, you're trying to see more pitches, trying to make pitchers work a little bit harder. But you also have to let guys be themselves.

It's why you try to create balance. It's why you have any stock parade is in the order. It's why Yordon is so important because he is a bit more of a patient hitter. You know, and sometimes it just plays out that way. who was throwing last night, he has really good stuff. He's also had some control issues. So you want to be kind of on the lookout for, is he going to be just erratic and not in the zone, in which case we can use that to our favor? But if he's generally throwing strikes and he's 97, 98, and he's got a good breaking ball, the idea of just sitting around and trying to rack up

pitches on somebody like that, you're not doing yourself, you're doing yourself this service because you're getting behind and you're going to get to those putaways. The issue that, you fall into is you can do exactly what happened last night and create a stretch of three, four innings in a row where it goes really quickly. And he's in and out of those innings and he gets really comfortable and really gets into a rhythm. And that's what we saw last night. That's the danger of a very aggressive team that you can have a lot of very quick innings

pile up. So, Brian, if this team is where they are at 126 games, as many wins as they have losses, they can go in the clubhouse and look at each other and say, remember, like I'll give you a good example. Taylor Tremel against the Padres and the Giants was fantastic. He hasn't seen a hit, I think, since then, it feels like. I mean, a lot of strikeouts. Sometimes you just are who you are,

and that's got to be unsettling for those guys looking at each other going, man, I remember when Christian Walker hit that big three-run Homer Friday night to beat the Mariners, and then I remember the last couple days, and I'm just using two guys an example, striking out with bases loaded or with key guys on the base pass. I mean, if there's something consistent about it is, You just can't rely on these guys day in and day out.

And that's frustrating for a baseball team as trying to stay in this pennant race. It is. But athletes think differently. And there's a lot of, I wouldn't call it, irrational confidence. But when you play a sport as unforgiving as baseball, when you go through years and years of being a hitter, where you go through slumps, where you're going to struggle, you don't dwell on that stuff. And you're always thinking about the time when you were hot or the time when you were, you know, not missing anytime you got a pitch to hit. And, you know, when you have the ups and downs,

it never really sits in your head mentally that you're in a down stretch. You're always just one swing away from turning it around. And you have to be. If you're going to go there and just constantly be down on yourself for every slow stretch that you went through, you wouldn't make it through 162 games. So yes, it's frustrating. And everybody wants to ride out the hot streets as long as possible. But at the same time, once the game starts, once you get to a real at bat and you're done doing your work for getting ready for the game, you have to have the confidence that you had when you were going good, even if you're not. Brian, Bocosovic with us here on 790. So Brian, can the hitting coaches, can Joe, can they go to them and say, hey, we're noticing a trend. We're watching guys come in here with low pitch counts getting a lot of outs on first pitch swinging. Is there such a thing as saying, hey, sit back and take a pitch or do sometimes, if some guys think that, it changes their mindset overall about their at bat?

Well, you have to have context to it. You know, you have to go back and look at how those games played out and what the pitches were that you were swinging at. Just because you swing at a first pitch and get out doesn't mean it's a bat at bat, right? It's what is the pitch that you swung at? Where was it located? What was your mindset?

What were you thinking going in? What were our scouting court on the guy going in? in. Now, if you're swinging at first pitch sinkers down and in and just beating them into the ground and rolling over pitches, then maybe you can go and say, okay, I need an adjustment on what I'm looking for. I need an adjustment on what my approach is. But if you're getting pitches to hit and just missing them and just happen to pop one up or, you know, he hung a slider and I just caught it off the end of the bat a little bit and didn't catch it, that's just the process was fine, just the result wasn't there. So you really have to take a real hard look at how those at

bats played out to determine whether or not the process was good. And if the process was good, you continue to go with it because it can work in the future and it has worked in the past. But that's something that that's what a hitting coach's job is. That's why they have video rooms. That's why you bring players in and really break down those at bat. One more batting question. I don't mind Cam Smith batting deeper. the lineup. I know he's been hitting better the last few weeks or so. You do want to turn it over to the top of the lineup.

That's one thing. But number two, maybe there is indirectly a little bit of relief that Cam is not always finding himself in position where he's got to get Yordon home on a play. I mean, obviously, he wants to do that every single time, but maybe there's just a little bit of relaxation,

a little bit of less angst, batting, say, seventh, eighth or ninth as compared to being in the heart of the order. Yeah, it's a balancing act because if a guys starts to heat up a little bit. Obviously, you want to get him closer to the middle of the order and maximize some of that production. But at the same time, you have to think is where he's hitting in the order, have something to do with the success that he has. And it's really difficult to hit in the middle of an order. And obviously, Yordon is going to be the focus of anybody's scouting report when it comes to this lineup. But you start getting into that four, five spot. And teams take a little bit more notice or a little bit more careful. You're going to get. pitch to a little bit differently. And it's really hard for anybody, let alone a young player, take all of that on. And it's kind of a fine line that you have to walk, especially now that Cam's bat has heated

up and that the offensive production just as a whole is down. Are we going to be able to get the same amount of production if we put them into the middle? And that's just, you know, that's what managers do. That's the manager's job is to figure out where heat. its best. All right, now to Ethan Peco is going to make his major league debut tonight for the Astros. Well, I'm sure he's thrilled. I'm sure he can't wait and he's going to have family and friends in there. But my goodness, what a way to make your major league debut. Oh, by the way, your team is one game in front of the opponents.

And there are plenty of spots available for anybody in this starting rotation to grab one of those spots. Yeah, there's a little bit more to it than just, okay, there's going to be. the emotion and the adrenaline of first major league start. This is a real high-stakes game. And, you know, just from a matchup standpoint, it is a good place for a young pitcher to be against this Angels lineup. They're a mistake-hitting team. It's a team that, from a game planning standpoint, you can say, all right, go out there,

execute your game plan, make pitches, and you should be fine. What's, you know, a little bit nerve-wracking from the outside looking in is, is typically you would look at a guy in this situation and say, hey, we're going to put as much support around you as possible. Hopefully the offense is going to score you a bunch of runs. Give us four or five solid innings. We'll hand it over to the bullpen. That's not really the case right now. The offense hasn't been scoring a ton.

The bullpen has been overused. They need a guy to go deep into a game. There's a little bit more that the team needs and hopefully expect because they think he can do it. So, yeah, it's not the soft landing spot that you would typically look for for a rookie coming up and making his debut. But this is just the point where they're at. You know, it's a tough stretch. There's not the off days. You're not going to be able to massage this rotation and skip starts and use bullpen days.

You just need the guys to go out there and pitch well. So the expectations are going to be just a little bit higher. How would you handle EMI staying with starting pitching? Well, for right now, I think they've got to be, you know, kind of happy with what they've gotten out of him in the bullpen in terms of it's been a little bit more consistent with the results are. There's going to be a pull, especially if the starting pitching continues to be a little bit shaky on the back end to say, can we pull him out of the bullpen and put him back into the starting rotation? But I think for right now, you know, they've gotten decent production out of him from there. And I wonder if they're going to get to a situation to where if they can target one or two spots in the rotation to maybe have him be a piggyback option, that might be kind of the best use of what he is down there. But right now, they need multiple guys in the bullpen that can provide lengths because the guys in the starting rotation aren't doing it.