Speaker 1: Guessed Brian bogos Sevic of Space City Home Network and
of course, former Astro with us here on the program.
Speaker 2: Brian, how are things very good? How are y'all pretty good?
Speaker 1: I would say things maybe not so good for the
Astros bats, but he at least you scratched enough across
the plate for a win yesterday. But just in general,
because it's kind of funny to me, and it's like
everybody at the same time was kind of slumping except
jose Al Tuve then he kind of goes.
Speaker 2: On his slump.
Speaker 1: What is that like in a clubhouse in the major leagues?
Speaker 2: And I mean, is it like an infectious thing?
Speaker 1: Or these guys where it seems to be hitting what
everyone at the same time?
Speaker 2: And what's it like dealing with something like that?
Speaker 3: You know, it's is it infectious yet? Kind of because
you know, you can see as you know, everybody knows
what the box score looks like at the end of
the game, and everybody knows, you know, when when a
big situation comes up, Oh man, we you know, if
we could, if we could get this base hit with
second and third, this really might you know, be the
tipping point. So everybody's kind of on edge and feeling
that pressure a little bit collective pressure. But it's not
really something that's discussed. You know, nobody talks about, oh man,
we're all we're all dying over here. What do we
need to do? Uh? But you know it's also very
important in a situation like this to have veterans and
have guys who've gone things, gone through things like this before,
because you don't want a panic. You do want to
keep a level head and say, Okay, what what can
I take out of this that I'm doing right? That
I need to try to build on what am I
not doing right that I need to fix and not
just be out there scrambling, not just be out there
searching for something. And today you know, I'm trying to
put my hands in this position, or tomorrow I'm going
to open up my stance and that's going to do
it for me. I like, there's got to be some
level headed the and with with guys that have had
success there there's a lot more more of that than
there is panic in a clubhouse.
Speaker 2: And let's just go to some of the hitters individually.
Speaker 1: Jord On Alvarez with the rocket yesterday, and he had
some hard hit balls the day before. Looks like he's
starting to wake up, like will expected he will.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good sign.
Speaker 3: And it's a really good sign that home and that
they hit yesterday was a pitch out over the plate,
like maybe even off the plate a little bit. And
when he's getting extended on those pitches, when he's you know,
staying down and not pulling off a little bit and
mis hitting those pitches, that's a really good sign of
what's to come in front of that. Also, if you're
down a little bit, you know, more so than than
I can really remember in the past, he seems a
little bit more apt to expand the zone, or not
even expand the zone, just to expand what he wants
to really attack. You know, he's been more prone to
swinging at pitches on the edge or just a little
bit off early counts. You know, I think he's usually
very very selective, and a lot of that could just
be you know, struggling a little bit, trying to get
yourself going. Some of it could be you know, he's
gotten pitched very carefully with the struggles of guys behind him.
Nobody really wants to mess with Jordon, you know, or
really has to mess with Jordon, So that could be
a little bit of frustration of just the pitches that
he's getting. But but yeah, it's always a good sign
when he starts hitting the ball out over the plate
into the middle of the field, because eventually off of
that comes everything else and comes, you know, driving the
ball on his pull side.
Speaker 1: Brian bogas Cevich with us here on a Sports Talk
seven nine, let's go to Christian Walker. Unfortunately, especially relative
to what we've seen from him before, the whiffs are up.
The walk rate did improve, and he had that four
straight game stretch where he was drawing two walks of game,
So it kind of looks like he's.
Speaker 2: Trying to be a little bit more patient. What are
you seeing from him?
Speaker 1: Is he just trying to impress a little bit too
much being here in a Houston Astros uniform.
Speaker 2: What does it look like.
Speaker 3: You It looks like a guy who's pressing. It looks
like one hundred percent a guy who wants nothing more
than to validate the contract, you know, validate bring brought
into an organization. You know, have the fans say, Okay,
that's why we went and got that guy. We all know,
everybody in the stadium knows what he's done in the
last couple of years and the player that he's been
and the caliber of player that he is, but they
also want to see it here now this year. And
I also wouldn't discount you know, I mean, he knows
what happened here at first base over the last couple
of years with a bray you and he knows that
nobody wants to see that again. So it just looks
like a guy who's who's putting, you know, as much
pressure as there is from the outside, there looks like
there's a lot more pressure coming from the inside. But
it does look different now than it did.
Speaker 2: At the beginning of the season. You know, there was.
Speaker 3: Some hard contact involved, not falling in. Now it's kind
of been all or nothing one way or the other.
He's either very selective and working walks or you know,
it looks like there are times when he goes up
there and he says, all right, this is the time
I'm going to get a pitch of hit, I'm going
to swing, I'm gonna drive it, and then you know
it's a slider down in a way and I swing. Anyways,
that's just a guy who's trying to force it, and
there's really no cure. I mean, his swing looks fine,
His swing looks like it always has. It just looks
like a guy who needs a couple of at bats
of success to relax a little bit. And the only
thing you can do is keep running out there every
day until it happens.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that last comment you made, it leads me to
my next question. Like, if you put your manager's hat
on and you're Joe A. Spata and you see the pressing.
He's again in the lineup today. He's played in every
single game. That's what he's brought here to do. But
at what point do you say, maybe just give him
a couple of days off or is.
Speaker 2: That just conversation.
Speaker 1: It's a case by case basis, because clearly seems like
he wants to be there in the lineup every day
and try to work this thing out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 3: That's that's having to get to know your player. That's
having to get to know you know what he's going
to be like and do on an off day. Some
guys you can say, I give you an off day
so you can get away from baseball and not think
about it. Decompressed and a guy will do just that,
you know, come in, he wanted to put on batting
gloves that day, Skip batting practice, just check out other guys.
They'll go down to the cage and they'll hit for
two hours because that's going to be the day that
they're going to figure it out. And so you know,
you got to know what kind of guy you're dealing
with and if the day off will be helpful or harmful.
And I don't know the answer to that. That's that's
that's a manager. A manager's job more than you know,
deciding who's coming in out of the bullpen and writing
out the lineup every day is learning your players, learning personalities.
You know, Walker, you know, from the outside looking in,
seems like a guy who he doesn't want the day off.
I think he just wants to play and figure it out.
But you know, you sit in the manager's seat to
manage people, not necessarily just manage games.
Speaker 1: Brian Bogas seven, continuing with us here on a Sports
Talk seven ninety Have you gotten I don't know if
we've addressed this with you yet this season, Brian, have
you gotten your hands on a torpedo bat?
Speaker 2: Uh?
Speaker 1: And is to my knowledge Mariso Dubon is the only
one using one for the Astros right now.
Speaker 2: Correct, Yeah, as far.
Speaker 3: As I know, I know that some guys, I know,
some guys in the minor leagues were you know, hitting
batting practice and tinkering with them during spring training. I'm
sure guys have had their hands on them and picked
them up. I mean there's you know, you've been in
clubhouses to see the amount of bats in there and everything. Now,
But yeah, as far as I know, he's the only
one to put one into use during during the season
so far. And actually, you know, you had a pretty
pretty good band the first a pulled it out. So
I'm sure a couple other guys are like, yeah, maybe
I'll think about that too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, how much of that is I mean, what is
the difference? What is Is it much ado about nothing?
Is it changing things up?
Speaker 3: It's so so the concept is fairly simple, right, It's
you know, there there are limitations to wait and shape
of a bat, and all it is is taking you know,
within those diameters, shifting where the most mass of the
bat is to try to maximize you know, the results
when you hit the ball. So if you're a guy
who you know, hits the ball down towards the label. Often,
you know, they shift the weight from the end of
the bat down towards the middle of the bat and
then have it taper off towards the end. You know,
we're used to seeing bats flare out to their barrel
and then their that size all the way to the end.
The torpedo bat just moves a little bit more of
the mass into the middle and then has another taper
at the end where you don't want to hit the
ball anyway. It's not a different concept to different models
of bats. I mean, there are endless, endless models of bats.
You know. Some are thicker in the handle, some are
thinner and have larger heads. Some are cupped at the
end to have more mass in the middle, some have
you know, full ends to keep more mass at the
end of the bat. It's not dissimilar to that. It's
just a more extreme example, and it's the newest example,
which is why everybody's inn offs about it.
Speaker 1: All right, let's move on. I mean, kind of a
little bit to the pitching side, but not really. Hunter
Brown pretty good yesterday, did get some traffic on the
base pass. But I mean, obviously at this moment the
astros most reliable starter. What is that like for you
as a position player, Like maybe you can remember some
guys you played behind when they were pitching and you're like,
you feel like you're just kind of spectating. You're like,
this guy's on the hill today, I'm not doing anything
in the field.
Speaker 3: It's great, it's great, And there's a difference. It's am
I not doing anything in the field because it's just
ball four ball four ball four nibble, nibble nibble, Or
am I not doing anything in the field because he's
just going out there and shoving it on people and
then we're running back in the dugout to hit. Because
that's kind of what That's what it's been with Hunter,
you know. For it's been about a year ago since
he added that two seamer, and everything has changed. Obviously,
the results have changed and he's been so good, but
just the style of pitching, the aggressiveness in the strike zone,
the willingness to challenge people to pitch to contact, to
be efficient with his pitches, just everything has completely done
a one eighty and he's really turned into to the
kind of guy that you love playing behind, you love
hitting on the days that he pitches because it feels
like you're in your dugout all the time, and it's
just when you have that guy, I mean, he's he's
six innings at a minimum. He's gonna give you a
chance to win, and it's easy to show up. It's
easy to be motivated, it's easy to play hard behind
guys like that.
Speaker 1: It's almost like he's just had a flip, a switch
flipped as well to where like he just kind of
gets pissed off out there, you know, like he gives
up a hit, he's like, give me the ball back,
I'm gonna go ahead and clean this up.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, before before everything turned and he's been
this kind of pitcher, it was the exact opposite. It
was almost as if he was standing on the mound thinking,
all right, when's the next shoe gonna drop? When are
things going to fall apart? When are two bloopers going
to fall in? And then I'm gonna make a bad
pitch and it's gonna get hit. It was one of
those like when is the sky going to fall? And
now you see him, if he gives up a hit,
it does not affect him at all. It's almost just like, oh,
that was lucky for them. They got a hit, But
like this next guy's not going to and it doesn't face,
and it seems like everything has slowed down to where
he can really diagnose what's going on between him and
a hitter. He can really diagnose what's going on. You know,
did I make a bad pitch and need to fix
it up, or did that guy just you know, hit
one off of his hands and it dropped in behind
the second basement, in which case I need to do
nothing different because the next one is going to be
a ground ball double play. And you know, the addition
of the sinker, the ground ball rate that he's getting
now and his ability to get double plays, just the
confidence is off the charts from from a guy who,
you know, one year ago at the start of last season,
looked like his confidence was shaken.