The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Optics of Framber and Salazar, Bunt Attempt and More with Brian Bogusevic

Episode Date: September 3, 2025

Optics of Framber and Salazar, Bunt Attempt and More with Brian Bogusevic

Our buddy Brian Bogasevig is with us and he's with us every Wednesday here on the Matt Thomas show. We'll spend 10 quarter minutes with him. If you missed the conversation with Dana Brown earlier today at 9.30, we're going to play a decent chunk of that coming up at 1120. Shut your bum ass up at 1230. The news at noon. And we'll be Fritz today all between now and 2 o'clock. So a busy show for you today. Plus we've got to get into the story about what is happening in Los Angeles with Steve Balmer and the Clippers and Kauai Leonard.

Uber, uber juicy stuff. Bogie is with us here on the show Wednesday. What an odd evening on many accounts, Bogie, as you saw things, cross-up, a not stepping off. The offense was not really around much. The two home runs made a huge difference in the contest. Bunting. Bunting issues. It was not a game that you're going to want to go watch on the best of Space City Home Network, correct?

Yeah, that's not going to be on the highlight. real. You know, there are oftentimes you can lose the game and walk away saying, you know, had one or two things gone our way, we'd have been there, or, you know, this didn't go right for us, but we did a couple of things good over here. That was one where it was just like, you can't take anything from that. That was a pretty thorough beating by the Yankees. The Yankees played the exact style of game that they wanted to play. It didn't seem like there were any answers. And, I mean, it was a six-run game. for most of the game, it felt like 16 runs.

Okay, look, the people that will really know what happened, is the pitcher, the catcher, maybe the manager after the conversation, but just the baseball fan. Cross-ups happen all the time. The problem is, bogey, if it was any other pitcher, we would chalk it up to cross-ups happen. And it can happen with your elite pitchers as well, just like we have with Frommer.

but the body language, the prior issues of maybe issues on the field about how defense or replacements, we don't need to go into an alseem on that. I'm not asking you whether or not you believe him or not, but the look was just so bad that everybody from Sports Center to Major League Baseball Network to this radio show, other shows are saying, what's going on with this guy who's supposed to be playing for a new contract and supposed to be either a 1 or a 1A on this starting pitching rotation? Yeah, I mean, the optics of it were about as bad as can be, and if it were a cross-up or whatever, it's a hell of a coincidence in when it happened.

But, you know, whatever happened between Fromber and Tessor Salazar, they can work that out. I've seen worse things happen in clubhouses that guys work through and get over, and, you know, we can get through stuff like that. I think the bigger issue for the team, the bigger issue for Frumber, you know, this year and moving forward and other teams looking at it is once again for, you know, how many times here in the last six, eight weeks, you've got a guy in the mound who is good enough to be a Sigh Young candidate, a guy who is good enough to carry a team to the playoffs and carry them deep into the playoffs, standing out of the mound in a huge game and he's fighting multiple battles. I mean, it's hard enough to go out there and you're facing the Yankees. It's the hottest team in baseball. And you're frustrated by the rapport with the catcher. And we've seen to be frustrated with defensive alignments. And we've seen to be frustrated with plays being not made behind him.

And, you know, your focus has to be 100% on I need to get the guy out who's standing in the batters box. And when you're swimming in your head and there's all kinds of other things going on, it's distracting. And you're not going to get your best performance. And it's a team that needs Fromber's best performance to get them to the playoffs and to, you know, have any shot of going anywhere in the playoffs and they've consistently not gotten it not because he's not capable of it but because it seems distracted does that move its way through the diamond the guys in the lineup the clubhouse or could there be a certain aspect of man we love fromber he's our teammate he's our bro when he's on he's giving us six inning seven innings of two

hit ball but sometimes that just comes with the package and that they can shake it off or does sometimes that become a detriment when you have a guy that you know is as good as he is, had these kind of, meltdown maybe too strong of a term, but uneasiness on the mound when you are sitting here trying to hold on for dear life to win this division? It's both. I mean, you know how much time guys spend around each other during the course of the season, how well they get to know each other. It becomes like a sibling relationship.

And, you know, everybody knows that they're siblings. You love them for the good and for the bad, but they're also the people that. and frustrate you the most that you can fight with the most. And, you know, guys understand each other. They understand how each other, how everybody ticks. And, you know, you know what their good days are like and what their bad days are like and you learn how to work through them together. But this time of the year, when everybody's supposed to be, you know, forgetting all of your personal stuff and moving in the right and in the same direction and it's, you know, 26 guys in the clubhouse. And the only thing that matters right now is winning games to have somebody who's

so vital to that seem like there's more going on than just that that is about as frustrating the thing that there can be in a clubhouse. Brian Bogosevic with us here on Sports Talk 790. Let's go to the bats. We know they've had some issues with runners in scoring position and we've talked all season long

about approach and changing your approach but staying within yourself. What do you think is just happening as far as a collective because everybody seems to be struggling, especially with the runners in scoring position situations. As far as meetings and talking with coaches and each other.

What do you think is happening behind the scenes right now with the Astros and this funk they've been? Been in. Well, I think in the clubhouse, the thing that you're most trying to express and the thing that you're most trying to spread throughout, you know, all of the hitters and the meetings and everything is relax. The last thing you want to do is be going up there tight,

trying to do more pressing. You don't want to turn a second and third one-out situation into a pressure situation for you, right? That's a pressure situation for the pitcher. You're not supposed to be feeling like, oh, here we go again. I hope I'm not the guy that gets out. That's taking a positive and turning it into a negative.

So you're trying to kind of smooth everything over and just tell everybody to relax. You know, they're getting hits, not necessarily yesterday, a lot of hits, but in general, there's runners on base. There's stuff going on. That's why they're getting those scoring opportunities. So if you just continue to push forward, you know, law of average,

just says you should start to get those hits with runners in scoring position. But at bat with the runner and scoring position is not the same. Pitchers are going to be more careful. They're going to go to their best stuff. They're going to try to prey on your weaknesses. And we've seen a lot of times where a very aggressive team gets into that runners and scoring position situation and turns it up a notch and gets even more aggressive and pitchers are able to prey on that.

There's been a lot of at-bats in those situations that have ended early on not the best pitchers to hit. Well, one of those situations was Jeremy Payne, with runners on first and second, what did you make of the bun attempt there? Well, you know, first and foremost, I hope everybody understands it wasn't a sacrifice bun, right? He's bunting to get on base. He's trying to sneak attack the third baseman who's sitting back on his heels deep in the hole. That's, you know, he's trying to move the line along.

You know, if it works out and you're sitting there bases loaded for Yordon, it's a smart play. I just think where his stature is, I guess you could call it in this lineup, you know, how good he's been this year. You kind of want him to be above just trying to sneak a hit. Hey, go be a run producer. I know you're hit and lead off, but when you get these opportunities, we need that. I will say this. Just in general, in a situation where a pitcher is struggling to throw strikes where there's not a lot of balls being put in play, walk, hit by pitch,

that's usually a good time to try to sneak a bunt down and fields kind of on their heels a little bit. Pitchers maybe trying to lay one in there. So the rationale behind doing it isn't, terrible, but the fact that, you know, make the argument that he's the best hit around the team throughout the course of the season, you need that guy to go get the big hit, not just move it along. What about the fact that Carlos Correa has kind of added that responsibility of taking perhaps more pitches than he wants to because of the fact there have been so many innings,

it feels like in the last two weeks where he has seen the guys in front of him take just a couple of handful of pitches. And all of a sudden, that pitcher across from him is in a low pitch count, meaning that if he records the out they're going to go back on defense and that starting pitcher of his own maybe back on the mountain sooner than he wants to be yeah there's there's been a couple situations where you know a pitcher of ours has had a long inning and then there's been the first two outs made on three or four pitches and somebody's had to go up there a couple times it's been carlos and take a pitch take a strike and just try to at the very least make along at bat it kind of comes

with territory it's just you know playing the game um Carlos is also a guy who's comfortable hitting with two strikes. He's comfortable going deep into the count. So for him to be willing to take on maybe a little bit more of that responsibility is him, you know, kind of seeing an opportunity that I can do my part and maybe a little bit more because, you know, the last thing you want to do is go up there and tell a yiner Diaz or Jose Altuve to be somebody that they're not. That's not going to be productive. It's not necessarily about when you're swing. Go up there and swing at all the first pitches you want if they're good pitches to hit. Don't go up there swinging that first pitch sliders, in the other batters box and either, you know, rolling over or being down 01 every time.

So it's not necessarily about when they're swinging. It's what they're swinging at in those situations. Staying with the hitting, we talked a lot this year about Cam Smith, how good he looked early on. He just unfortunately continues to struggle out there. What are you seeing from him? A guy who's got some things to work through with his swing and his timing. and his mechanics who's at a point in the season where there's not a lot of time or energy to be able to put into getting that working.

And he's just kind of got a fight with what he's got from here on out. You know, you can't go into the cage when you're this deep into the season and put in hour-long hitting sessions trying to figure it out and going out for early batting practice every day like you can in spring training in the first month of the season. At some point in the year, your swing is your swing. And right now he's backed a little bit to where he was to start the year. It's a little bit stale. It's a little bit late.

But, you know, he's trying to fight. He's trying to hit the ball the other way because that's what he can do right now. You know, every once in a while, he's trying to use the count in his favor to be able to, you know, cheat a little bit and get the head out. But it's – he's just in the spot right now where your swing is what it is and go out there and fight and try to produce what you can. And that's what you got for the rest of the year. Thank you for your efforts. As always, my friend on TV and radio. We appreciate it.

And we'll talk with you soon. Thanks for the time. Hi, thanks, sir. You got a Brian Bogusovic with us every one. Wednesday here on Sports Talk 7.9.