The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Brian Bogusevic Talks About the Astros Continued Inconsistency

Episode Date: July 22, 2026

Brian Bogusevic Talks About the Astros Continued Inconsistency

1102 sports talk 7.90. Let's spend 10 quality minutes with our friend Brian Bogusevich of Space City Home Network as a kids call it S-C-H-N. And Bogie, let's get right to it. We were impressed with Tatsui Imi yesterday. And we've been impressed a few other times over the course of the year. It's just been remarkably inconsistent. And that's what I think is the hard thing to really rally around what we saw last night. is because he'll follow up one great performance with two or three really subparer performances. Is that just a byproduct of who he's going to be? Is it a byproduct of his first year being in the United States playing baseball?

What do you see as maybe trying to build off of something on a back-to-back start situation? Yeah, it's definitely gotten to the point to where you're going to have to show it before people really buy in because, you know, we've seen it for a start or two over the course of the first half. Yeah, the stuff works. I mean, there's no question that when he's throwing strikes and when he's commanding the zone and when he's working ahead of hitters, that he can get major league hitters out. The question is, does he have the ability to do it consistently on a start in and out basis? We haven't seen it yet.

But I do think there were some subtle differences yesterday that show maybe a little bit of maybe not just growth from him, but also the team understanding. You know, when we were down in the dugout with Joe is spotted before the game, he was talking about in my start, what he expected from him. And I was just talking about some changes that they thought they could make in the second half and some adjustments, you know, just from learning him. And I think first and foremost, we saw the use of the split finger, change up call it, whatever you want. He used it more yesterday than in any start. It was effective. It adds a different element of kind of front and back changing speeds versus just trying to get you to swing and miss. spin off of a fastball.

And it was also more slider to set up the fastball versus fastball to set up the slider. Just kind of leaning into your strengths. His slider is his best pitch. He threw it more than any of his other pitches. And it felt like the fastball was almost a secondary pitch once he could feel hitters waiting back a little bit, trying to recognize spin. So just those things that, you know, not mechanical changes, not necessarily the stuff being different, but just different usage patterns, I think maybe can provide a little bit more

confidence, which could hopefully lead to a little bit more consistency. Now, you look, you look at 140 Astro games a year, so it's hard to maybe go picture by picture, but is there a sign or something you see early in games that you know what you're going to see from Tatsui over the course of the night based on what you may be seeing the first or second inning? Yeah, if it looks like he's nibbling, right, just trying to be too fine on the edges of the zone, that always leads to the high pitch count that leads to the long inning, that leads to walk, it leads to, you know, usually the eventual big swing that scores a bunch of runs and puts up a crooked number.

When he's in there and looks like he's comfortable throwing the ball more into the middle of the zone, trusting his stuff to work against hitters, that's when he's usually set up for success. And even if it costs him a run or two throughout the course of an outing, those are the outings where he typically can eat up more innings and, you know, come out of it at the end of the outing and say, okay, on the whole, that was a good out. Brian Bogus-Evick with us here on the Matt Thomas show with Ross on Sports Talk 790. And I know that Baltimore series really deflated a lot of folks, frankly deflated me, Brian. And not the two victories against the Marlins are going to change all that. But is this five-game stretch just been a little bit of a microcosm of what we've gone through this entire season?

I mean, when you're thinking about, all right, now should the Astros start selling at the deadline? You sit and look at the standings. You're three back. It ain't great. You're still under 500. You're still trailing the wild card. How are the players adjusting to this knowing that the consistency is there? There are a slightly under 500 team, but yet no one in this division has pulled away, giving them a 8th and 9th live at this point. Yeah, you know, it's very different from a player standpoint versus a fan standpoint.

Or even if you're a part of an organization in a front office or something where you're looking very big picture. players are in the day-to-day. They really and truly, it sounds cliche, they don't care about anything other than what's right in front of them, getting ready for today, playing today, trying to win today. And if you win today, all is good. But, you know, going back to the Baltimore series, the thing that was, you know, most disappointing, you know, we've looked at the standings all throughout the year and judged, you know, judging against that, it's not that bad of a situation.

But it's always, to me, you look at yourself, how are we playing? And for the course of, you know, most of June and into early July, it was, you know, we're playing pretty good baseball and we're getting there. We're getting to where we want to be. That series against Baltimore was concerning because it just wasn't good baseball. It was poor execution. It was a lot of walks again. So, you know, you're hoping that that's just a blip on the radar and now moving into this Miami series. It seems like it kind of was, which, you know, you can weather that.

That happens. You have a bad series. You have a bad week, whatever. But as long as you can snap out of it, quickly. quickly, then it's not too much to worry about. If the Astros are going to turn this around, of course, it's going to have to be with the help of the rotation. One turn through post-all-star break.

How are you feeling about it overall? You know, I was actually looking at some of these numbers this morning. Pretty good. If you look at it, so one time through for everybody, they average just over five innings per start. So pitching into the sixth inning, which is huge, not just for. the starters, you know, that helps the bullpen. Starters ERA is under four, it's a three, seven, five-ish, which you'll take that

compared to what it was in the first half. You know, we're not looking for dominance every single night. We're looking for consistently good keep us in the game. I think the thing that's a couple things that are that are most encouraging. Number one, we saw things from Spencer Arigetti and Tetsui, I, that you can point to and say, okay, that could lead to sustain success going forward. You know, some of the things that we've been wanting to see,

throwing more strikes, throwing the breaking balls in the zone. But also, I think Renel Blanco looks great. He looked healthy. He looked like somebody that you can, you know, count on, assuming he stays healthy. And then the other thing you point to is that they did that one time through, and Hunter Brown still didn't have a good start. He still doesn't look like himself.

You know, you need to get him right. You want to get him right. And I'm very confident that he's going to get right. So if the pieces around him are doing well and moving forward, he's going to turn it on at some point, and then I think you're in a pretty good spot. Brian Bogusevic with us here on Sports Talk 790. I'm curious your former player's perspective, Brian, on Jeremy Pena,

and can you kind of just take us through a little bit what he's been through because he's had these hamstring injuries, and then he's had a couple of cramps and he's missed some time also with the calf injury. What is, obviously, he feels like he's not 100%. but he's trying to do everything he can to be out there. What are the things that he is going through and putting himself through to continue to be out there? Well, first of all, it's frustrating, right? You know, as much as we look at it from the outside and it's frustrating when, you know,

a guy who's your maybe second best offensive player can't stay in the lineup and you're like, man, you know, we're just not clicking on all cylinders. It's so frustrating for the players. You know, he's doing work in the weight room, doing work in the training, room trying to get through this. But the soft tissue injuries in a sport where you have to play every day, it's almost impossible to get 100% through and past them during the season. It really takes, it really takes an offseason of giving them, you know, weeks and weeks and weeks of rehab and strength building to get back. So it's just something that you have to try to manage. And it's a lot of

trial and error. It's a lot of taking stock of how do you feel on a day-to-day basis, trying to honest with yourself and maybe, you know, letting the manager know when I'm not feeling great and I need a day off, even if it's, you know, contrary to your nature to just, you know, when you want to be out there and play every day. It's just, you know, it's a pain. It is a huge pain in the butt to deal with leg, soft tissue injuries during the course of the season. We were half joking about the impact of a Nate Pearson trade to Kansas City. And that's obviously to once again, like Lance McCuller's last week, open up some roster spots. So does this mean that they're just trying to settle in that bullpen for if a couple of guys still

can't be starters i.e. and Mike Burroughs that he comes back on the major league roster and comes out the bullpen. How do you shape up moving a low leverage reliever this time of year when everyone's running to their social media platforms to see what Astros players are coming to Houston as compared to leaving Houston? Yeah, it's just, you know, this time of year, first of all, you've got a bunch of guys coming off of the injure list. So there's just a roster crunch. It's just a numbers game to a degree, right? You can only have 26 guys in the roster. You can only have 40 guys in the 40-man roster. So you've got to have, you know, make the most out of what you've got and you've got to

accommodate the guys coming back. You have to also keep open spots for potential trade. So if you're, you know, moving we're less than two weeks to the trade deadline, you want to have the flexibility to add if the opportunity presents itself. So it's, you know, it's, you know, you know, just kind of procedural things, and a lot of times it's the move or the moves before the actual move. But yeah, it's just kind of roster house cleaning up to this point. Is Yordaun Alvarez the best hitter in baseball, and if so, why? Yes, because all of the math and my eyeballs tell me that. It's incredible. I mean, he's starting to lap the field. I mean, you're looking at OPS numbers that are 10, 12 percent above

the second highest OPS in all of baseball. He's getting close to, you know, triple crown leader in not just the American League, but all across Major League Baseball. I just, I'm most impressed on a day-to-day basis, not when he hits a ball 500 feet, but just some of the pitches that he hits out, which are pitches that you really shouldn't hit hard, let alone hit out of the ballpark, or, you know, he can go through these stretches where he's either hitting everything for home runs or he's just getting hit after hit after hit.

I think his batting average is close to 500 over the course of the last eight to 10 games or something. It's just it's the combination of power and just pure hitting, which there's nothing even close. If you look at the guys who are, you know, 25 home runs plus or the guys who are three average 300 plus, there's no crossover in that group and he's basically at the top of both of them.