May 13, 2026 • 12 mins
Brian Bogusevic Breaks Down Tatsuya Imai & Astros 4-Game Slide
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Love and O three Sports Talk seven ninety. Let's spend
ten quenty minutes with our good friend Brian brogos Evich.
You see him on sc h N Bogie. I think
people were a little nervous about what Joe said before
the game. Throw strikes, throw to your strengths. He threw
(00:21):
two pitches and we were talking about this about a
forty five minutes ago on the radio show. It feels like,
if you're a major league pitcher, even though you're trying
to get out of your doldrums, diversity can sometimes help
you a little bit. Unfortunately, when it was so heavy
on the four seam fastball and the slider, I think
they were the intelligence report got to the Mariners fairly quickly,
and they beat up on him in the middle of
the game. Yes last night.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Yeah, uh, it became pretty predictable pretty quickly, and you know,
it kind of surprised me a little bit after the
game when Emi was talking and he said, you know,
he wants to get back to the way he pitched
in Japan, which is mainly forcing fastball and the sly.
So I went back and looked at some of the
scouting reports this morning. Stuff that people had written up
(01:04):
of seeing him in Japan, and that is very much
true when it comes to facing righty's, but he threw
a lot of change ups split fingers to left handers
and his time in Japan, and that was a very
left handed dominant lineup. So I don't know that it's
necessarily just this is the way I pitch, and I'm
going to try to get back to my strength. It
seems like there's more going on there, certainly with the
(01:26):
change up and just not being comfortable with it, either physically,
you know, being able to throw it where he wants it,
or mentally just not having the confidence in it. But yeah,
it was a pretty glaring absence and something that you
really need to get through a left handed heavy lineup.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Another thing that bothered me last night and obviously didn't
make that big of a difference, is there were two
free passes essentially extra bases stolen. Wise, Emi just did
not pay much attention over there. The law long stride
doesn't help the case. Is that just him focusing so
much on trying to throw strikes that he just sometimes
forgets about who's over at first base.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Yeah, that's what it looks like. It looks like his
you know, entire focus was on home plate and everything
else around him kind of you know, disappearing, and it
kind of speaks to a broader just sense of what
it looks like, right, you know, is the fight that
you're going through, internal or external, And it looks like
(02:30):
he's very much internalizing everything. It's trying to get out
of his own way. It's trying to get my mechanics right,
it's trying to execute my pitch. It's trying to you know,
make sure that I'm throwing to where I want to
when at the end of the day, once you get out,
like that's fine in the bullpen and that's fine, and
you're throwing work, and that's fine when you're you know,
working on stuff, when you're on the mound, and it's
the game like it's in the external competition, it's you
(02:53):
versus the hitter. It's you and the game that's going
on around you. You know, it doesn't matter if you
have a good feel for this pitch or if you
feel good, right, like, just just compete, you know, compete
against the guy in the batter's box. Compete against the
other team, not against yourself. And it feels like He's
very much internalized and everything that he's dealing with is
kind of in within him. And it's not just I'm
(03:16):
out here competing. I don't even know if I have
my good stuff or not, but I got to try
to figure out a way to get guys out and
give us a chance to win. It seems like it's
just solely inward focused.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
The funk the Astros are in this year is not
completely about Tatsui Emi. It's mostly and most recently been
about the Astros offense. If you were in the clubhouse
what you occasionally are and Cam Smith came over to
you and said, Hey, Brian, what are you seeing from me?
We were kind of hoping. We were talking last hour
about things that were optimistic about what could be vastly
(03:49):
improved from the second half of last year to the
first half of this year, and unfortunately Cam is back
in that run again. What would you tell him if
you if you were to pull him aside.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Well, I think for him, the thing that's been most
important for him from day one when he broke with
the club last year is being on time, and really
being on time, not just trying to get started earlier,
but actually getting to your hitting position. And there are
times when he does, and there are times when he doesn't.
Even when he is trying to be early and trying
(04:20):
to be ahead of the fastball, he just doesn't get
there with his hands and with his loads sometimes and
when you see I forget which that bad it was,
but he had a count yesterday where it was like
a two to zero count or very much a hitters count,
fastball count, fastball pitcher, and it was just late, you know,
foul ball over the first base, dugout, jammed, and it's
(04:40):
just like you're just not getting on time, and just
go back to all your cues, go back to watching
the video and see if you're actually even if you
feel like you're getting there, go back and check and
see if you're actually getting there, because it's not always right,
and if you're not on time, if you're not on
time to the fastball, you can't make adjustments off of that,
and everything gets thrown in the goes.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
Haywire, sticking with the hitting, but somebody on a different
spectrum of their career, Jose al tuove what you're seeing
from him as far as the I mean, the hot
start obviously wasn't going to hit like that all season long,
but has has been in a deep funk.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Yeah, it's been it's been a while, but I think
we're seeing signs of it. You Know, he got he's
on base a couple of times. Yesterday, he had three
hits first day against Seattle. And it's not just oh,
he's getting hits. He's coming out of it. It's what
the hits look like and where they're coming. You know,
their balls barreled back up the middle, their balls, you know,
off the plate away that he's staying on and shooting
the other way, because that's what we saw a lot
(05:37):
of the first whatever it was, fifteen games of the
season when he was really focused on middle the other way.
Not I'm trying to yank the ball. I'm trying to
hit the ball out of the ballpark. It's just I'm
trying to throw the barrel at it and get hits.
And I think some of that, maybe a lot of
that has to do with being back into the leads,
off spotting in front of you or not. You're no
(05:58):
longer you know, in the four hole or five hole
run producer, hit for power drive runners, and it's just hey,
get on base if you have to take a walk.
That does the job. If you just shoot a ball
through the four hole to the right side, that does
the job. Also, I feel like with where he needs
to be for that consistency matches up well with top
of the order table setter in front of Jordan. And
(06:22):
you know, it's only two games, but we've seen a
little bit of that in the Seattle series. Maybe that
kind of gets him going again.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
Brian Bogosvik was us here on Sports Talk seven ninety
Lansbacullors Junior is on the hill as far as we
know tonight. What what is going on with the Apparently
did the nail fell off his pointer finger? And I thought,
don't pitchers use their their fingernails to kind of grip
and spin the ball?
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Yeah, I mean, if you think about his curveball, he
kind of spikes it to throw that curveball. So you're
digging in. But I don't know. I mean, I know
that he was going through regular throwing programs and was
out there on the field and working out, and he's
throwing today, so it must be good enough. I wonder
if you know when it initially tore off in his
last start, you know, raw skin, it kind of doesn't
(07:08):
feel good and you don't have a good feel for it.
Maybe maybe it hardened up and stiffened up a little
bit over over the course of the last five days,
and now is good enough because it's not it's not
necessarily the nail that you're digging in with. It's just
the pressure on the tip of your finger. So as
long as you can press with like that without pain
and it feels right, should be okay. But he needs
(07:28):
it because that curveball is his putaway weapon. You know,
he's going to go out there and if he gets
ahead in account, it's going to be curveballs. And they
need to be good because this is a Mariner's lineup
that they are very much mistake hitters. If you leave
those breaking balls up, they'll hammer them.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
Brian, I was listening to our morning show today here
on seven ninety and they were talking about, you know,
when you get into a rut, do you go to
a veteran leader, do you go to a guy that say, hey,
media comes in, ask questions. You got to kind of
it wear it for the team when teams are down,
and they brought up Jose Al two Big almost exclusively.
(08:06):
You and I have known Jose for a very long
period of time. He is a man, a leader of actions,
and ultimately, if he's got something to say, he's going
to do it with the doors closed and no television
cameras and no reporters anywhere near him. Let me ask
you from a another tough loss in a building, another
seven or eight run deficit, do players sometimes appreciate the
(08:29):
fact that the microphones will go to that leader and
they have to bear the brunt of those questions or
is it a little bit of over importance that that
a that a leader has to take those kind of
comments when teams are suffering the way they are right now.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
No, I think it's I think it's appreciated. I think
it's respected, and I think that's just kind of how
teams are built. You know, there there are pecking orders
and hierarchies in clubhouses, and you know it comes with
the good and the bad. But you know, the biggest
thing is you just want you want guys to be genuine.
(09:09):
You want your leaders to be genuine in you know
they will they will step up and be the leader
of the team when it's good, and they will step
up and be the leader of the team when it's
not going well, and and how they lead is the same,
good or bad. And you know, you get guys who
do it in different ways. But the biggest thing is
are they going to show up tomorrow and do the
(09:30):
same things that they did, you know, maybe when it
was going well at the beginning of the season or something.
And that's that's how you have the calming influence on
the younger players in the clubhouse is if they see
you not panicking, if they see you not drastically changing
your routine and trying to do things differently. It doesn't
really matter what, you know, a veteran says in front
(09:53):
of the cameras after the game. It's just kind of
what they have to do. It's can you show up
and you show me how we're supposed to act. And
those guys are so good at just keeping calm and
continuing to go about to go about it the way
they should, while also getting across the point that, hey,
there is a sense of urgency that we need to
turn it around here quickly.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
Last question, Brian and those veterans, Jordan, we know what
the resume is. We know what Jeremy Painey is when
he's healthy, we know what Josel Tuba has been. There
are a lot of guys right now because of injuries,
getting an opportunity that otherwise would not get it. And
I don't want to point out one particular player, but
let's just find a player that you have in your roster,
(10:36):
XYZ player that has a reputation of crushing the ball atriplea,
but there's a deficiency the major league level that allows
him not to stay at the major league level and
he's doing the same sort of thing. I mean, that's
why I think passimism probably is a little high, because
you're asking guys that have never done it before to
step up and be something they have not been before.
(10:56):
So what's the balance in rooting for a guy to
finally pull through but ultimately knowing that there's deficiencies in
their game, whether it's not ability to throw strikes as
a pitcher, or ability to hit a curve ball or
not strike out a lot, or not be a big
RBI producer.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
Yeah, I mean, you have you have guys who are
organizational depths and they're there in that role for a
reason and this it's it's okay, and they're useful to
fill roles for short periods of time, because you can
use them in situations where you can play to their
(11:34):
strengths and hide some of those weaknesses, and you can
try to pair them with other guys on the team
for maybe platoon roles or splitting time and try to
massage it a little bit. Where you get in trouble
is when you have to rely on guys for extended
periods of time, or three or four of them at
(11:55):
the same time, and you just you can't hide the
deficiencies anymore, and that's a very difficult thing to do.
That's when you kind of feel like your hands are
tied as a manager and you have to put guys
out there and just kind of hope that they play
over their heads for a while. And we kind of
saw that for a little bit early on with the pitching,
when just so many guys were hurting so many guys
(12:15):
before Ragetti came and Lambert came and really settled it
down a little bit. It's like, you know, if you're
if you're depending on somebody for one start here or there,
that's fine, you can figure that out. But if it's
we got to run somebody out there in five days
for three months, Eventually it's just going to get exposing.
There's nothing we can do. So that's the that's the
biggest thing with with the amount of injuries that they
(12:37):
can cover up. You can cover up for any one
injury for a short amount of time, but a lot
of injuries over extended period of time. Eventually you just
don't have the personnel to do that.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
And that's what I'm afraid of right now. What's going
to happen unfortunately the local nine. Brian, thanks for the visitors.
Always look forward to catching you on Space City later
this evening. All right, I got Brian Bogas Epic with
us every Wednesday here on Sports Talk seven on
Love and O three Sports Talk seven ninety. Let's spend
ten quenty minutes with our good friend Brian brogos Evich.
You see him on sc h N Bogie. I think
people were a little nervous about what Joe said before
the game. Throw strikes, throw to your strengths. He threw
(00:21):
two pitches and we were talking about this about a
forty five minutes ago on the radio show. It feels like,
if you're a major league pitcher, even though you're trying
to get out of your doldrums, diversity can sometimes help
you a little bit. Unfortunately, when it was so heavy
on the four seam fastball and the slider, I think
they were the intelligence report got to the Mariners fairly quickly,
and they beat up on him in the middle of
the game. Yes last night.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Yeah, uh, it became pretty predictable pretty quickly, and you know,
it kind of surprised me a little bit after the
game when Emi was talking and he said, you know,
he wants to get back to the way he pitched
in Japan, which is mainly forcing fastball and the sly.
So I went back and looked at some of the
scouting reports this morning. Stuff that people had written up
(01:04):
of seeing him in Japan, and that is very much
true when it comes to facing righty's, but he threw
a lot of change ups split fingers to left handers
and his time in Japan, and that was a very
left handed dominant lineup. So I don't know that it's
necessarily just this is the way I pitch, and I'm
going to try to get back to my strength. It
seems like there's more going on there, certainly with the
(01:26):
change up and just not being comfortable with it, either physically,
you know, being able to throw it where he wants it,
or mentally just not having the confidence in it. But yeah,
it was a pretty glaring absence and something that you
really need to get through a left handed heavy lineup.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Another thing that bothered me last night and obviously didn't
make that big of a difference, is there were two
free passes essentially extra bases stolen. Wise, Emi just did
not pay much attention over there. The law long stride
doesn't help the case. Is that just him focusing so
much on trying to throw strikes that he just sometimes
forgets about who's over at first base.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Yeah, that's what it looks like. It looks like his
you know, entire focus was on home plate and everything
else around him kind of you know, disappearing, and it
kind of speaks to a broader just sense of what
it looks like, right, you know, is the fight that
you're going through, internal or external, And it looks like
(02:30):
he's very much internalizing everything. It's trying to get out
of his own way. It's trying to get my mechanics right,
it's trying to execute my pitch. It's trying to you know,
make sure that I'm throwing to where I want to
when at the end of the day, once you get out,
like that's fine in the bullpen and that's fine, and
you're throwing work, and that's fine when you're you know,
working on stuff, when you're on the mound, and it's
the game like it's in the external competition, it's you
(02:53):
versus the hitter. It's you and the game that's going
on around you. You know, it doesn't matter if you
have a good feel for this pitch or if you
feel good, right, like, just just compete, you know, compete
against the guy in the batter's box. Compete against the
other team, not against yourself. And it feels like He's
very much internalized and everything that he's dealing with is
kind of in within him. And it's not just I'm
(03:16):
out here competing. I don't even know if I have
my good stuff or not, but I got to try
to figure out a way to get guys out and
give us a chance to win. It seems like it's
just solely inward focused.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
The funk the Astros are in this year is not
completely about Tatsui Emi. It's mostly and most recently been
about the Astros offense. If you were in the clubhouse
what you occasionally are and Cam Smith came over to
you and said, Hey, Brian, what are you seeing from me?
We were kind of hoping. We were talking last hour
about things that were optimistic about what could be vastly
(03:49):
improved from the second half of last year to the
first half of this year, and unfortunately Cam is back
in that run again. What would you tell him if
you if you were to pull him aside.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Well, I think for him, the thing that's been most
important for him from day one when he broke with
the club last year is being on time, and really
being on time, not just trying to get started earlier,
but actually getting to your hitting position. And there are
times when he does, and there are times when he doesn't.
Even when he is trying to be early and trying
(04:20):
to be ahead of the fastball, he just doesn't get
there with his hands and with his loads sometimes and
when you see I forget which that bad it was,
but he had a count yesterday where it was like
a two to zero count or very much a hitters count,
fastball count, fastball pitcher, and it was just late, you know,
foul ball over the first base, dugout, jammed, and it's
(04:40):
just like you're just not getting on time, and just
go back to all your cues, go back to watching
the video and see if you're actually even if you
feel like you're getting there, go back and check and
see if you're actually getting there, because it's not always right,
and if you're not on time, if you're not on
time to the fastball, you can't make adjustments off of that,
and everything gets thrown in the goes.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
Haywire, sticking with the hitting, but somebody on a different
spectrum of their career, Jose al tuove what you're seeing
from him as far as the I mean, the hot
start obviously wasn't going to hit like that all season long,
but has has been in a deep funk.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Yeah, it's been it's been a while, but I think
we're seeing signs of it. You Know, he got he's
on base a couple of times. Yesterday, he had three
hits first day against Seattle. And it's not just oh,
he's getting hits. He's coming out of it. It's what
the hits look like and where they're coming. You know,
their balls barreled back up the middle, their balls, you know,
off the plate away that he's staying on and shooting
the other way, because that's what we saw a lot
(05:37):
of the first whatever it was, fifteen games of the
season when he was really focused on middle the other way.
Not I'm trying to yank the ball. I'm trying to
hit the ball out of the ballpark. It's just I'm
trying to throw the barrel at it and get hits.
And I think some of that, maybe a lot of
that has to do with being back into the leads,
off spotting in front of you or not. You're no
(05:58):
longer you know, in the four hole or five hole
run producer, hit for power drive runners, and it's just hey,
get on base if you have to take a walk.
That does the job. If you just shoot a ball
through the four hole to the right side, that does
the job. Also, I feel like with where he needs
to be for that consistency matches up well with top
of the order table setter in front of Jordan. And
(06:22):
you know, it's only two games, but we've seen a
little bit of that in the Seattle series. Maybe that
kind of gets him going again.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
Brian Bogosvik was us here on Sports Talk seven ninety
Lansbacullors Junior is on the hill as far as we
know tonight. What what is going on with the Apparently
did the nail fell off his pointer finger? And I thought,
don't pitchers use their their fingernails to kind of grip
and spin the ball?
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Yeah, I mean, if you think about his curveball, he
kind of spikes it to throw that curveball. So you're
digging in. But I don't know. I mean, I know
that he was going through regular throwing programs and was
out there on the field and working out, and he's
throwing today, so it must be good enough. I wonder
if you know when it initially tore off in his
last start, you know, raw skin, it kind of doesn't
(07:08):
feel good and you don't have a good feel for it.
Maybe maybe it hardened up and stiffened up a little
bit over over the course of the last five days,
and now is good enough because it's not it's not
necessarily the nail that you're digging in with. It's just
the pressure on the tip of your finger. So as
long as you can press with like that without pain
and it feels right, should be okay. But he needs
(07:28):
it because that curveball is his putaway weapon. You know,
he's going to go out there and if he gets
ahead in account, it's going to be curveballs. And they
need to be good because this is a Mariner's lineup
that they are very much mistake hitters. If you leave
those breaking balls up, they'll hammer them.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
Brian, I was listening to our morning show today here
on seven ninety and they were talking about, you know,
when you get into a rut, do you go to
a veteran leader, do you go to a guy that say, hey,
media comes in, ask questions. You got to kind of
it wear it for the team when teams are down,
and they brought up Jose Al two Big almost exclusively.
(08:06):
You and I have known Jose for a very long
period of time. He is a man, a leader of actions,
and ultimately, if he's got something to say, he's going
to do it with the doors closed and no television
cameras and no reporters anywhere near him. Let me ask
you from a another tough loss in a building, another
seven or eight run deficit, do players sometimes appreciate the
(08:29):
fact that the microphones will go to that leader and
they have to bear the brunt of those questions or
is it a little bit of over importance that that
a that a leader has to take those kind of
comments when teams are suffering the way they are right now.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
No, I think it's I think it's appreciated. I think
it's respected, and I think that's just kind of how
teams are built. You know, there there are pecking orders
and hierarchies in clubhouses, and you know it comes with
the good and the bad. But you know, the biggest
thing is you just want you want guys to be genuine.
(09:09):
You want your leaders to be genuine in you know
they will they will step up and be the leader
of the team when it's good, and they will step
up and be the leader of the team when it's
not going well, and and how they lead is the same,
good or bad. And you know, you get guys who
do it in different ways. But the biggest thing is
are they going to show up tomorrow and do the
(09:30):
same things that they did, you know, maybe when it
was going well at the beginning of the season or something.
And that's that's how you have the calming influence on
the younger players in the clubhouse is if they see
you not panicking, if they see you not drastically changing
your routine and trying to do things differently. It doesn't
really matter what, you know, a veteran says in front
(09:53):
of the cameras after the game. It's just kind of
what they have to do. It's can you show up
and you show me how we're supposed to act. And
those guys are so good at just keeping calm and
continuing to go about to go about it the way
they should, while also getting across the point that, hey,
there is a sense of urgency that we need to
turn it around here quickly.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
Last question, Brian and those veterans, Jordan, we know what
the resume is. We know what Jeremy Painey is when
he's healthy, we know what Josel Tuba has been. There
are a lot of guys right now because of injuries,
getting an opportunity that otherwise would not get it. And
I don't want to point out one particular player, but
let's just find a player that you have in your roster,
(10:36):
XYZ player that has a reputation of crushing the ball atriplea,
but there's a deficiency the major league level that allows
him not to stay at the major league level and
he's doing the same sort of thing. I mean, that's
why I think passimism probably is a little high, because
you're asking guys that have never done it before to
step up and be something they have not been before.
(10:56):
So what's the balance in rooting for a guy to
finally pull through but ultimately knowing that there's deficiencies in
their game, whether it's not ability to throw strikes as
a pitcher, or ability to hit a curve ball or
not strike out a lot, or not be a big
RBI producer.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
Yeah, I mean, you have you have guys who are
organizational depths and they're there in that role for a
reason and this it's it's okay, and they're useful to
fill roles for short periods of time, because you can
use them in situations where you can play to their
(11:34):
strengths and hide some of those weaknesses, and you can
try to pair them with other guys on the team
for maybe platoon roles or splitting time and try to
massage it a little bit. Where you get in trouble
is when you have to rely on guys for extended
periods of time, or three or four of them at
(11:55):
the same time, and you just you can't hide the
deficiencies anymore, and that's a very difficult thing to do.
That's when you kind of feel like your hands are
tied as a manager and you have to put guys
out there and just kind of hope that they play
over their heads for a while. And we kind of
saw that for a little bit early on with the pitching,
when just so many guys were hurting so many guys
(12:15):
before Ragetti came and Lambert came and really settled it
down a little bit. It's like, you know, if you're
if you're depending on somebody for one start here or there,
that's fine, you can figure that out. But if it's
we got to run somebody out there in five days
for three months, Eventually it's just going to get exposing.
There's nothing we can do. So that's the that's the
biggest thing with with the amount of injuries that they
(12:37):
can cover up. You can cover up for any one
injury for a short amount of time, but a lot
of injuries over extended period of time. Eventually you just
don't have the personnel to do that.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
And that's what I'm afraid of right now. What's going
to happen unfortunately the local nine. Brian, thanks for the visitors.
Always look forward to catching you on Space City later
this evening. All right, I got Brian Bogas Epic with
us every Wednesday here on Sports Talk seven on
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If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The MeatEater Podcast
Building on the belief that a deeper understanding of the natural world enriches all of our lives, host Steven Rinella brings an in-depth and relevant look at all outdoor topics including hunting, fishing, nature, conservation, and wild foods. Filled with humor, irreverence, and things that will surprise the hell out of you, each episode welcomes a diverse group of guests who add their own expertise to the vast world of the outdoors. Part of The MeatEater Podcast Network.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by Audiochuck Media Company.