Speaker 1: Hey, we are so happy to have with it for
another season of Astro spring training conversation and regular season
for the next hopefully twenty six twenty seven weeks. We
saw had a Brian Bogus Evic Space City Home Network Ball,
get's Matt Ross. Great to have you back. How are
you enjoying the WBC.
Speaker 2: Well, it's good to be back. I like it. I
think it's fun. It's really nice, especially this time of
year when the novelty of spring training is wearing off
a little bit, to see meaningful baseball and every once
in a while it kind of gets the feeling of
playoff baseball and high stakes. So yeah, it's a fun tournament.
It's obviously new compared to most international tournaments, so it's
not the same juice as the Olympics or the World
Cup or whatever. But it's fun and guys play hard,
which is enjoyable.
Speaker 1: What do you do to do you ramp down or
do you try? And you obviously don't want to maintain
because the spring training game on March the twentieth against
the Marlins would not have the zest that a World
Baseball Classic game would be. So if you were in
that locker room, in that clubhouse talking to those guys.
How do they get themselves from the emotions of this
big event to getting back into Hey, we got a
regular season the counts in a week and a half
and we needed to take it down a notch then
ranch it back up again.
Speaker 2: It's hard to figure because we've only had a handful
of these tournaments, so there is really no you know,
best practices and protocols for it. I think you know,
once you get if you get through it to that
point and you've played that many games at that high
of an intensity, you should be pretty much game ready
and you're stretched out. You're playing these guys, for the
most part, playing full games, so you I guess, give
a little bit of a buffer couple of days to
relax and unwind a little bit and let anything recover
that needs to recover. But then just try to roll
into it. I mean, you're not going to replicate those
kind of reps the last week of spring training, so
try to keep the timing that you've that you've gained
and kind of try to try to get your body
ready to go day one. But I would imagine that
they're there pretty much where they would want to be
coming out of spring training, so you just kind of
just kind of try to hold on.
Speaker 1: All right, So let me go from the other side
of things here, what is the club like the teams?
And again there's just a few players gone here and there.
But how do you think Joe and other managers in
baseball have worked around this because they're trying for the
end goal to get their team ready for the start
of the regular season.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's two sides of it, I think. I think
the first side is everybody likes this. Everybody likes, you know,
full competition as opposed to exhibition setting, and they like
the international play and it's a good tournament. It grows
the game. Everybody's on board with the tournament. So they
do you know, they help guys out a lot. They
got some of these younger guys more reps in the
first week of spring training that maybe they would have
gotten to get get them ready and up to speed
of the WBC. But the other side of it is is, hey,
we've got a regular season to play and it's a
long season, and we need these guys and you're kind
of just biting your nails as they're gone and hoping
that you get them back healthy and ready to go.
I mean, that's the downside to any kind of exhibition tournament,
and certainly one that is happening. You know a couple
of weeks before the regular season starts, is can't afford
to have any major injuries. So yes, you enjoy it
and you watch it, and you want your guys to
do well and you want to grow the deed, but
at the same time, it's like, just get our guys
back healthy so we can move on to the regular season.
Speaker 1: Brian Bogosivich with us here on seven and let's get
to the Astros now. The number one story conversation piece
this offseason was the congested infield and maybe the lack
of quality or at least experienced bats in the outfield
that might remedy itself early on. Especially Jeremy Paine is
not going to be ready for the start of the season.
You can move parades to third, move over corret a
shortstop as you've seen it over the last five months.
Talk if you can from a macro view of things
of how this thing has turned out and if everybody
eventually gets healthy, which hopefully will be the case. How
does Joe Spotta navigate these waters.
Speaker 2: It's difficult because you're talking about five guys for four spots,
but it's also five of the six best hitters on
your team, guys who you want and need in the
lineup every day. And you know, I think what's happened
here early with the pain of injury is it's a
good lesson on not doing things until you have to
do them. You know, everybody all off season is talking
about a trade needs to be made and thrown around
names and everything. But over the course of the season,
things tend to work themselves out and situations change, and
we see that here quickly. Although you know, fingers crossed,
it's not going to last very long into the regular season,
but you know, I think there are going to be
I think there's no one set answer, right. It's not
a at bat share at first base, it's not somebody
moving to the outfield full time. I think it's a
lot of everything, and over the course of time, you'll
see these guys, these five guys in the lineup together
almost every day, whether it's you know, being able to
mix in yourd on in the outfield occasionally to open
up a DH spot, or a regularly scheduled off day
for a Korea or a walker where parades can slide
into the corner and just just kind of enough everywhere
to satisfy. That's got to be the long term answer,
because that gets the most out of these guys who
you need. I don't think we're going to see a
single set solution to this anytime soon, and I don't
think you need to just because over the course of
the next six months, there are going to be very
times when guys are banged up or struggling, or somebody
is okay moving to one position or the next, that
it's going to be able to kind of work itself
out organically.
Speaker 3: Moving to the outfield, especially on the young guys. I'm curious.
I don't know how much hands on looks you've been
able to get so far this spring, but Cam Smith
has been hitting a little bit, and what you've seen
out of Zach Cole, who's struggling some and then maybe
somewhere in between Joey Librafido.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think, first and foremost, I think what we've
seen from Cam Smith is very encouraging. You know how
many times last year were we talking about adjustments that
he was making during the course of the season, and
a lot of it had to do with getting the
bad head out more consistently, catching the ball out front,
being able to drive the ball in the middle of
the field and on the pull side. And we've seen it.
His setup is a little bit different, kind of the
way he's holding his bat is flattened out. He's got
a little bit more rhythm in his start, and you know,
he hit a home run I guess two three days ago. Now,
that was just a bullet to his pull side, which
he didn't do a single time in spring training last year.
With all the production that he had, all the hits,
all the home runs that he had in spring training
last year, he never pulled the ball in the air
like that. So he's he's making the strides that we
want to see him make. And if he can do
that more consistently, what we saw from him last year,
he has good enough back to ball skills, he has,
you know, really good instincts in the outfield. If he
can start driving the ball more, then just pencil him
into right field every day. And we were seeing good
signs early from him that hole. He looks like he's
caught in between an approach. You know, he's the guy
who had really good results swinging the bat a lot,
and the kind of the thought was, Hey, you need
to tighten up the approach a little bit to be
able to have that success continue over the course of time.
And he looks like he's caught in between being patient
and being aggressive and isn't really getting either right now.
So that's going to have to work at You know,
he's gonna have to work through that and you know
at bats and time will allow him to do that.
The question is is that is that time going to
happen in spring training, Is it going to happen in
the big leagues to start the year, or is it
going to take some minor league at bats. I like
what I've seen from low Berfido. I mean he's driven
the ball to all fields. You know, he's he had
some strikeouts early, but he's tightened it up a little bit.
What he did. You know, he had one hundred at
bats or so in Toronto last year. His strikeout numbers
were way down, his contact numbers were way better. And
that was always the question with him when he was here.
You know, we like the bat, we like the power.
Is he going to make enough contact for it? To
show there are legit signs of it going in the
right direction, so he might play his way into a
lot of at bats and left field to start the season.
I like what I've seen from him and Taylor Schmell
as well. He's he's kind of guy that I think
we forgot about him a little bit. But you know,
this time last year, he was a guy who we
thought would maybe play a significant role before you know,
injuries derailed most of the season.
Speaker 3: Brian Bogosvik with us here on Sports Talk seven ninety
to the pitching side. Can you temper my enthusiasm for
for Mike Burrows or should I just be all systems
go and get excited about his spring?
Speaker 2: I'm with you. I mean, it's not just what he's shown,
you know on the mound and and this stuff looks great.
I mean, fastball is as a it's a more power
fastball than I thought it was going to be. The
change ups great, the sliders looked really good. But it's
the demeanor. You know, a guy who doesn't have a
ton of major league experience, he got about half a
season's worth the starts last year, gets traded over to
a new new team. I was kind of expecting a
guy who was, you know, a little bit giddy and
happy to be here and all this, Like he looks
like he is all business and like, just put some
real competition in front of me and I'm ready to
run through some teams. He has been really impressive, and
I think a guy who it was thought maybe, oh
he'll solidify the middle of the rotation, it's looking like
he can ascend to the top of a rotation. I
like everything that I've seen from him, and he seems
to be getting stronger as the spring goes on, and
just like he's chomping at the bit.
Speaker 1: We have eight million more questions for it. We'll leave
with one here before we get to next week's visit.
How short of a leash going back to the outfield
do you think that Zach and Cam have And does
that mean a guy like Bryce Matthew squeezes in the
roster playing some center film moving guys around, And how
much you're on an Alvarez do you want to see
in the outfield at least maybe in the first two
or three weeks of the season.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think so. I think the leash, the leash
for Cam is probably going to be a little bit
longer just because of because the ceiling is higher, and
so he's going to get more of an opportunity to
to to become that player at the big league level.
I think for everybody else, low Brafito, call all those guys,
I think it's going to be a short leash because
there's going to be a lot of options and there's
going to be a lot of guys that can be
plugged in if you're not producing, So you know, somebody,
somebody is going to take that job over the course
of the next two weeks. But it's not going to
be theirs until it's not. You know, it's going to
be theirs until they prove otherwise. So that will be
a short leash. And you know, you'ren they they don't
want to do it, but it just might turn into
a situation where you've got to if that is just
you know, every once in a while at home with
the small left field so he doesn't have to run
a lot, or if it becomes a little bit more regular.
I think it's something that Look, this is not me
saying I know anything, but it's got to be something
that's in the back of their minds of like, Hey,
if all else fails, we can put yourd on out
there every once in a while, or you know, fifty
percent of the time or something just too free up
at bats for other guys and make it work a
little bit better.
Speaker 1: Paul, get great stuff. Looking forward to our Wednesday visits
at eleven o'clock. Friend, Thanks for the time and we'll
talk to you next week.
Speaker 2: Cool Thanks guys,