Speaker 1: All right, we're seeing the Matt Thomas Show with Ross
ros Viria with you. Matt Thomas is out, Chris Gordy
is here hanging out. And right now, our weekly Wednesday
guest at eleven o'clock, as everybody knows, is Brian Boga
Sevic please to be joined by him.
Speaker 2: Uh Bogie Uh. First of all, actually let's start right
off with this Jordon thing. Can you explain to me
why home plate was so slick and why it looked
like there was a slipping slide down there for him
to get hurt.
Speaker 3: You know what it's it's kind of always that way.
You see guys slip all the time, and you know
it's it's kind of like damned if you do, damned
if you don't. You don't want yord On sliding your risk,
you know, jamming your knee into the batter's box. Batter's
box is a little bit harder than the field, you know,
slide into second base or something. But at the same time,
you're running full speed and you step on home plate
and you get You see guys slip all the time,
and that just that was an asculine there. There was
there was a good replay. You know, right in on
his foot and you saw, you know, go all the
way over on it. That was a that was a
nasty one.
Speaker 2: We had Joe spot on yesterday. He talked about like
guys toweling off home plate or something like, can you
explain that to me? Like, is that something guys? It's
as hitters do that before the first inning or something
like that, because it's the fields all wet obviously from
from the grounds crew wet wetting everything to start the game.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they spray down the batter's boxes and everything, and
obviously home plates gets home plate gets wet, but it'll
get wiped down. You'll see throughout the course of the
game the Empire come out and wipe it down, or
catchers will kick the dirt off of it. It's just,
you know, it's kind of like a necessarily sary evil, right,
You've got this flat, slick, hard surface right kind of
in the middle of the action. It's not ideal. I'm sure,
I'm sure Major League Baseball has explored better options. But
you know, if you change the material and then somebody
steps on it and their cleat catches in it and
they you know, roll an ankle or twist the knee
on top of home plate. Then you're gonna have everybody
screaming about that too.
Speaker 4: All right, Bog, you're reading between the lines of what
Joe Spot has said yesterday. Is there any hope of
perhaps you order? I mean, it feels like with two
weeks left in the season where I can see back
in the regular season game. But do you think it's
possible deep playoff running could be back.
Speaker 3: I think it's possible. I don't know if it's likely,
but I mean, anybody that's played basketball, watched basketball, covered basketball,
you see these ankle injuries all the time, and they're
you know, there's about as wide a variant variance on
an ankle spring as any injury you can have. And
and once once the swelling goes down in the in
the pain kind of subsides, you know, then you can
figure out more of a timeline how long it's going
to take to strengthen it up. And you see some
sometimes guys bounce back in you know, a couple of
days or a week, or or sometimes it's weeks in
two months. So there's really no way to tell right now,
but yeah, I think there's probably an outside chance that
it's possible but you know, to put a percentage on it,
and who knows these things? You have no idea. When
a guy rolls an ankle, you.
Speaker 4: You as a former hitter, how much does the ankle
matter in the box? We know obviously we're out of
the box. Run the bases. You got to have a
good ankle. But how much does does that affect the swing?
How much does does the ankle matter there?
Speaker 3: Yeah, actually probably more so than it does running. You know,
running is straight lining. You're up on the balls of
your feet and you're kind of under control. When you're
talking about hitting in the batter's box, there's a you know,
it all starts from the ground up. There's a lot
of force put into the ground. You're digging your cleats in,
there's a lot of torque. You have to really like
break through the dirt as you turn and transfer all
that power. And if your ankles are weak, it's you know,
certainly going to affect your swing from a power production standpoint.
It's also probably going to affect you mechanically as you
try to overcompensate. So yeah, I think honestly it will
probably it will probably be easier to get back into
a scenario where you can run in a straight line
decently earlier than you're talking about being able to take
one hundred percent, you know, full speed swings.
Speaker 2: Brian Bogasvik was here on a Sports Talk seven ninety
and that's all depressing, So let's get into something a
little bit more uplifting. Zach Cole been pretty good for
the Astros over three yesterday. Before that he had the
big home run as he replaced Jordan Alvarez. Uh, what
have you seen from him? And I was especially impressed
by the home run where it was the forcing or
top of the zone where pitchers like to pitch, and
he got around on that one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was actually that was a good pitch. That
wasn't a mistake that Jack Lader made and Jack Ledder
was in a groove and had some good stuff. So
you know, you start seeing a guy who can get
on top of somebody's best pitch at the top of
the zone, it's pretty impressive. He's got tools. I mean,
he's he's bigger and stronger than you kind of think.
He twitchy and explosive. He's got really really good back speed.
He can catch up to a fastball. I think the
thing that I've probably been most impressed about, though, is
you know, the hits that he's gotten that aren't the
home runs, the RBI bas hits, shooting the ball the
other way. He's handled some at bats pretty well, getting
down in the count, fighting back, laying off of tough
off speed pitches. You know, sometimes you think a guy
in that situation, a young a young hitter whose main
tool is power and bat speed, is gonna come out
there just hacking. But it's been pretty high quality at bat,
which you know, gives you more hope to maybe this
is somebody who can be helpful throughout the course of
a couple of weeks and into a playoff push, and
who knows next year, rather than just hey, this is
the guy who was swinging a hot bat at the
minor league. Let's ride it out for as long as
we can up here in the big leagues, you know,
and then we'll move on.
Speaker 4: The big question, Brian. We've had from a lot of folks,
you know, just bounce around town. People will go, hey,
what do you think that the Astros make the playoffs?
You think they got any chance? All this kind of stuff,
And my answer I'm giving to them now is this
is the playoffs, right, I mean, like with what Seattle's
doing right now, ten in a row is absolutely stupid.
But we'll see what the Astros could complete the sweep
tonight of the Rangers, but matters will play another game
tomorrow against the Royals. You'll know where this thing is.
Speaker 3: There?
Speaker 4: You a game back? Are you? You know? Two games back?
Whatever going into this weekend. But man, you talk about
the importance of a series, how crazy is this weekend
going to be? With Seattle coming in here? Basically they're
tied season series tied five and five. I mean, this
is the playoffs right here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is the real deal. This is every pitch matters,
every inning matters. There's no you know, we spend six
months talking about the big picture of baseball and things
will level out and you just keep making the right
play and you'll be fine over time. This is like
trust your gut, take some chances, roll the dice and
whatever you have to do. I mean, you can just
tell by the way the games are being managed. This game,
this series with the Rangers on both sides. You see
the amount of moves being made, pitching change is being made.
You know, both managers playing matchups from a pinch hitting standpoint,
guys coming in and out of the lineup on a
day to day basis. This is real baseball. This is
playoff baseball. And I mean, you know, Joe Spotta essentially
emptied the clip yesterday and did everything he could to
secure that win. It took every bit of Brian Abraw
And you know, is he probably not available today? Yeah? Sure,
but it doesn't matter because you had to get that
game yesterday figure out today today. So yeah, I mean
it's playoff baseball started this week here in Houston.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And what do you think the mood is around it?
We know that it's been a lot of veterans in
that clubhouse and a lot of guys who've been through
these types of wars. And they did win the last
two games, but it just feels like from an outside perspective,
the hits just keep on coming. With jord On going
down the way that he did, Seattle just does not lose.
How do you think things are going there? Just in
between the guys.
Speaker 3: You know, it seem it seems pretty steady. I mean,
you have plenty of guys who have gone deep into playoffs,
plenty of guys who have faced this kind of pressure,
and even the young guys that have come up through
the organization, they've been conditioned that this is eventually what
it turns into. This is not surprising for anybody when
they when these guys come up through the Astros organization
and they think about playing in the big leagues, they
think about playing in the postseason. So it's not really
sneaking up on anybody. But you knows, it's a strange
thing to say, but having lost so many players throughout
the course of the season, you know, when Jordon goes down,
obviously it's a huge blow, and you could just tell
by you know, how quiet the stadium got, and everybody
knew how serious it was, But it almost felt like
this was like, oh, you know, here's another one. And
it's almost like everybody's so kind of exasperated with with
how many injuries there's been. It's almost just, yeah, we'll
just keep doing what we're doing. It's almost doesn't have
that much of effect because they've had to deal with
it over and over. If this was a team that
was completely healthy all throughout the season and then you
get dealt this big blow, it would be a little
bit more shocking than kind of what has been felt
this last week.
Speaker 4: You know, back in second week of September twenty twenty three, Brian,
there was a guy named Evan Carter that got called
up by the Rangers and got red hot for them,
was a big part of their postseason run. Can Zach
Cole be the Astros version of Evan Carter here?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think there's actually probably a lot of similarities
between the two, just in terms of, you know, the
positions that they play, the kind of their game, the
power speed combinations, and it's you know, it's not uncommon
to go down into the farm system, find one of
your big prospects, guys playing well, and try to make
them the X factor. That's what Evan Carter was. It's
a kind of a different story with Zach coll I mean,
he was completely off the prospect radar. This guy I
wasn't in spring training. He was down you know, I
think around twenty in terms of the prospect rankings coming
into the season and repeating the level of double A
going into this year. So it's been a more out
of nowhere thing. But but yeah, certainly the same scenario
of we've got a guy who can probably help us
in some way, and we're going to go and we
need every bit that we can get out of the organization.
So can it be the extract? He's already been the
X factor. He's maybe not single handedly, but been a
huge part of two wins that they really needed.
Speaker 4: And what I like about him too, Brian is even
on nights where he's hitless, he works a walk, you
know what I mean, Like he's he's finding ways to
get on base for you. And that's what this team
is needed desperately the last couple of weeks.
Speaker 3: Well, they need people who can affect the game, and
he's done that. And you know it's been obviously the
big swings of home home runs, but yesterday he had
a played appearance where he walked. He tagged up from
first to second on a ball to right field. Then
he tags up from second to third on a ball
that was like medium depths in center field. He didn't
end up scoring, but he turned, you know, just a
walk with nobody on base into a legitimate run scoring opportunity.
And that's what they need as much as they need
a guy who can come up and provide a little
bit of juice to the lineup. Just give me as
many guys as we can in that order. Who can
you know, get it rolling a little bit, all right?
Speaker 2: Brian bogus Sevic weekly Wednesday guest here on Sports Talk
seven night Bogie. We appreciate, appreciate the time and insight
as always.
Speaker 3: Talk to you next week, all right, See you guys,