Brian Bogusevic was one of the pleasant surprises for Astro fans this past season. In fact he provided quite possibly the moment of the year for the Astros, on the field with his pinch-hit walk off Grand Slam against the Cubs in mid August.

Brian was gracious enough to take time out of his offseason to answer some questions for us:

Crawfish Boxes: What is the origin of your last name, Bogusevic?

Brian Bogusevic: My last name is Lithuanian. I think that it might actually have been longer at some point in time before my relatives immigrated to the U.S., if you can believe that.

CB: What was the hardest part switching from a starting pitcher to position player?

Bogusevic: The hardest part was probably just getting my body accustomed to playing on an everyday basis. Playing up to 162 games in a six month period takes a huge toll on you physically.

CB: How much data do the Astros provide in preparation for opponents? and do you prefer having as much data available or just going out and playing?

Bogusevic: There is definitely a lot of data available, and I prefer to have as much information as possible. I think that it can only beneficial to be as prepared as possible.

CB: What kind of waves have the ownership and front office changes meant for you as a player, if any? And have you had the opportunity to meet the new people in charge?

Bogusevic: I had to opportunity to meet our new GM Jeff Luhnow very briefly a couple of days ago, but have not met any of the other new front office members. With where we are as an organization, I think that almost every player is in the same boat in terms of where we stand with the new management. The rebuilding process is about finding guys who can play. We all have to prove that we can be the type of player that they want in order to a part of the long term plan.

CB: What area of your game are you looking to improve upon this upcoming season?

Bogusevic: Everything! Baseball isn't a game in which you can get complacent. I think that everyone who plays this game is always trying to improve every part of their game.

CB: Thank you for your time.

A big thanks again to Brian for taking time out of his rest and relaxation period to answer some questions for us here at TCB. Also, a thank you to Beverly Hills Sports Council for setting up the interview.

If you're not doing so already follow Brian Bogusevic on twitter: www.twitter.com/brianbogusevic and facebook: www.facebook.com/brianbogusevic

The Astros 2009 first round selection Jiovanni Mier finished this year with a .239/.345/.344 slash line in 505 plate appearances. While those numbers may not be eye popping they are an improvement over his 2010 season. Throw in that he made it to Lancaster at the age of 20 and there are some encouraging signs for the young Astros shortstop prospect.

Mier was kind enough to take some of his free time to answer some questions for us, in regards to last season, this offseason and next season.

TCB: How are you enjoying your offseason and what are some of the things you're doing with your free time?

Jiovanni Mier: I'm enjoying my offseason a lot, it's filled with hanging with my family and friends and watching a lot of football when it's on. I started working out again this week along with my diet so I'll do that in the morning and rest of my days are pretty much open.

TCB: What are your goals for the 2012 season and what directions have the Astros given, if any?

Mier: Some of my goals for 2012 are pretty much the same as they've been the last few years. Go into the season ready to work and get better and put myself in the best possible position to move up in the organization. They haven't really given me any direction except to come to spring training ready to compete and work hard and open some eyes.

TCB: How do you feel your 2011 season went and where do you think you improved your game?

Mier: Despite the low numbers I actually was very pleased with the season I had. I felt I put a lot of good at bats together and hit a lot of hard hit balls but just didn't get the result I wanted. The important thing for me was I learned a lot about myself and my game. I really improved on my defense and that was the main focus for me this year. I made it a point to myself this year that I wanted to become a sure handed shortstop and I felt I made big steps towards that.

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As I mentioned, I covered the Astros Winter Caravan stop last Saturday in College Station. One of the voices of the Astros, Brett Dolan, was kind enough to give me a few minutes to talk about the upcoming season. Below is the transcript of the interview, where he discusses his offseason, the Winter Caravan and not being the "new guy" anymore.

The Crawfish Boxes: So, when are we going to see one of those "best shape of your life" articles about you? Are you ready for spring training?

Brett Dolan: (laughs) I know I'm not one of the players, right?

TCB: Right, right. Are you getting ready for the season to start?

BD: I'm excited. I think everyone's excited this time of year. That's the beauty of spring training. You've got about a month of meaningless games, trying to get everyone ready to go. Time does fly from the first of the year to spring training and then from spring training to Opening Day.

TCB: Have you been vacationing some with the family this offseason?

BD: I've tried to, yeah. Baseball is such a demanding job. We're with the players every day for seven months. I try to spend as much time with my kid. I'm missing his basketball game today and am trying to find out the score. I actually got to come up here [to College Station], and do a football game at A&M against Nebraska on a national radio broadcast. So, I did a few of those, which was a lot of fun. No touchdowns...

TCB: But a lot of penalties.

BD: Yeah, that was the name of the game right there. So, I did a few basketball games and a few football games. Before you know it, we're ready to go [with the start of the season].

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Hunter Pence: I mainly set it up so I can interact with fans and get out there more.  I also wanted to give away some stuff.  It’s all about connecting with the fan base.  I didn’t realize how much fun it would be until after I got started.  The fans are a big help, like when I need recommendations for a restaurant in a city.  It’s also encouraging to get the support from the fans.  It’s a real confidence-booster.  I read everything I get.  Also, when I see the fans at the game, it makes me feel closer to them. 

The Astros have also been great at supporting it.  They have their own Twitter and Facebook pages, but they are obviously excited to have a player on there talking to fans as well.

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via brianmctaggart.mlblogs.com

That's right, the interviewer has now become...the interviewee! Astros beat writer Brian McTaggart is linked to early and often around here and since there probably won't be a lot going on until Spring Training begins, I decided to get an interview with Mr. McTaggart.

The Astros certainly don't have the most reporters covering the hometown nine, but McTaggart has stood out as hard-working and tough. Since switching to an online format, his stories have still been insightful and, if anything, the new venue has given him better access to players and a life without deadlines.

I asked him about a wide range of topics, including what exactly a beat reporter does every day at the ballpark, what he thinks of the current team and his take on how technology is changing his job, which you can see after the jump...

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So it took me an excessively long time to get this up.  School is beating me handily at this point (full load, plus an absurd LSAT prep course...plus Astros baseball 6 nights a week).  My apologizes for all who were waiting with baited breath for this, but better late, than never.

This final section is probably the most interesting, in which Zachary Levine really sheds some light on issues that only someone with knowledge of the day-to-day affairs of the Astros could.  Again, I thank Mr. Levine for his time and patience with me during this process.

Crawfish Boxes: Alright, another issue kind of related to Coop, but also to Dewey Robinson.  When I read your Father’s Day article about our home runs and walks, it was one of those Eureka moments in my head.  I remember reading about Coop lambasting the pitcher’s during Spring Training for allowing walks and it being emphasized that we weren’t going to walk guys.  Do you think that was maybe a strategy that could have been employed with someone with a little more control, like Roy or Wandy if they’re exhibiting it, but just trying to make it a blanket policy across our entire staff is something that should have been avoided? And do you think that you’ve seen a shift in emphasis since that observation?

Zachary Levine: I think that was a talking point.  I think that he simplifies things when he talks to the fans and the press.  I don’t think that the Astros are telling their pitchers to avoid walks at all costs.  I think that the truth lies somewhere in between.  I think that there are still guys that they want them to be careful with, especially when it comes to lefty/righty match-ups which Cecil Cooper has really taken too.  He likes to talk to the press about numbers he notices.  He seems to be interested in the numbers. I’m not convinced yet of how much a grasp he has on it, but his favorite statistical thing is the lefty/righty match-up.  Especially the last month.  You’ll notice that David Newhan is starting against righties and that Ty Wigginton is leading off against lefties, which for someone who I didn’t have a lot of good feeling for statistically when he came in, that’s encouraging to see.  His pitching is the same thing and you saw it work to such perfection when the Mets came to Minute Maid.  When he would do those lefty/righty switches and every button he pushed worked.   When he sent three pitchers in to face the Mets in one inning once they loaded bases in the, I think it was a seventh inning in one of the games, and he really managed his way out of the inning really well.  I think that it sometimes on this team dictates strategy and it burns him when you have Wesley Wright walk the righty David Wright and he gives up a home run to Carlos Delgado -- but, I mean what’s the difference between 6-0 and 7-0?  Somewhere in the middle is where the truth actually lies.  I don’t think that they’re discouraging walks any more than any other major league team.  Every major league team will tell you “pound the strike zone, pound the strike zone.”  I was reading the other day that Roy Oswalt leads the NL in strike percentage, which is something I’d never really looked at before, but he throws the highest percentage of his pitches for strikes out of any NL starting pitchers with qualified plate appearances (I think is what the stat was).  I think it was something like 65% or 67%.

CFB: About Roy Oswalt: He had the terrible the start, there was the groin that wasn’t really the groin and then the hip later, I know he said publicly that he wasn’t dealing with anything at the beginning and he wasn’t hiding anything, but having done some of the work with the pitch/fx data, his struggles and most of his home runs allowed came with men on base.  He had a ridiculously low LOB%.  Do you get a feel that maybe he was hiding a nagging something and he just doesn’t want to use it as an excuse because he was just fighting through it trying to be a competitor?  Or do you think it was just fluke?

ZL: I don’t think it was fluke.  I think there was definitely something wrong.  You see that when tried to take the mound in Washington when he clearly wasn’t ready, you saw his bravado.  He’s a competitor, he wants to be out there.  I didn’t pick up on anything specifically based on the overall numbers that was drastically different.  His strikeout numbers are back and that’s usually an indicator of good things to come, but I think that there was reason for his struggles early on.  Whether he wasn’t comfortable on the mound because of injury or what have you -- I don’t think it was a statistical fluke.

CFB: I know that Roy has a history of trying to gut these kinds of things out, but do you think that there was any kind of internal pressure for him to take the mound “we’re still in it, you’re our ace,” that type of stuff? Or do you think it was all self-motivated?

ZL: It was a lot of self-motivating.  I think he’s, more than of these guys, sort of his own boss.   He dictates his own schedule -- not to say he’s above the manager in this organization -- but I know a lot of the times, Cecil Cooper, with Roy Oswalt, would freely let Roy Oswalt his schedule, “when he’s ready he’ll tell us.”  I think, at least to an extent, it’s self motivated.  If this had been the last year of his contract, I could see it coming from within, but when you have so much committed to him for the next few years, it’s an even better sign that it wasn’t from within -- which is something I would have believed anyway just having been around the clubhouse.

CFB: As a follow up to that: do you think that this sort of a dangerous approach to take with such a valued commodity?  Should there be a little more oversight?

ZL: Yes, there should be a little more oversight and caution.  Especially when it’s been nagging for awhile.  I think that that’s the approach they’re taking with Kaz Matsui, who they’ve committed a whole lot of money to over the next three years.  Each time the time table has taken longer than they’ve expected it to.  They tell you one thing and then they get so cautious with him -- they only had him taking ground balls yesterday and I think that yesterday was day thirteen of the DL.

CFB: We made some moves at the trade deadline, but we gave few minor league guys (maybe low ceiling? maybe high?) for Randy Wolf and LaTroy Hawkins.  So essentially we pretty much stood pat.  Do you agree with the call to stand pat? Do you think we should have tried to trade for someone, maybe a younger guy for next year? Or a bigger name?

ZL: I would definitely not have tried to acquire a bigger name. First of all I don’t think we had anything that anybody wanted.  [betraying my bias, I interject with the Red Sox interest in our bull pen guys] I guess what I’m saying is that I don’t think that the Astros had anyone minor-league-wise to bring in a big league name.  I think that not only would have been foolish, but out of the question.  As far as getting rid of a guy, I guess there were two schools of thought on that: get rid of a guy who has years left on his contract and the other was to get rid of a guy who doesn’t have years left on his contract.  I don’t think I would have gotten rid of a guy who has years left on his contract, because I think that this team is not that far away -- with the willingness that Drayton McLane has shown in bringing in big pieces.  Berkman, Lee, and Oswalt are a pretty big foundation to build around if they show the willingness to bring in someone like they did with Roger Clemens in the ’04-’05 run.  I might have shown the willingness to get rid of the one year guys.  I know that Darin Erstad is a guy that they can get for relatively cheap as insurance policy for injury or real struggles for Michael Bourn next year.  I’d kind of like that they kept him around and have a better opportunity to resign him [note: this interview was conducted before we resigned Erstad].  I’m not sure that there would have been any harm in getting rid of some of the other “wise-men.”  I’m not going to sit here and really knock them for not getting rid of them -- you’re not going to really get too much for a guy to come off the bench for two months.  I think that standing pat, was maybe not the best option, but it was close.  It wasn’t so far from the best option that I don’t consider it a big organizational failure.

CFB: To wrap it up, there’s already a lot of speculation about how the Astros are going to do this off-season.  How do you think the organization will actually move?

ZL: Uh...I have no idea.

CFB: Ok, how do you think the Astros should move then?

ZL: I know one of the names being tossed around is CC Sabathia and I don’t think he’ll be an Astro next year.  I think Ben Sheets is a much better choice and we have a much chance with sort of the recruiting and the lower price tag.  It’s obviously a risk with his injuries, which makes me think that someone is going to overpay for him, but I guess that’s the theory with pitchers: you overpay for the end to get your money’s worth in the beginning.  I think that as long as the years aren’t crazy on Ben Sheets’ contract, then I think it’s a worthwhile thing.  I can see a rotation Oswalt, Sheets, Wandy, and Brandon Backe.

So this is part two of a three part interview with Chronicle writer Zachary Levine.  The first installment was a get to know you piece, today's installment presents a general overview of some of the big picture issues we talked about in regards to the Astros in 2008.  Again, my thanks to Zachary Levine.

Crawfish Boxes: Ok, we’ll segue more into the Astros, I guess.  What are your thoughts on how the season has gone so far?

Zachary Levine: I know it’s a failure when you don’t make the playoffs. But the way I like to think of it is that the average team in Major League Baseball gains zero wins from year x-1 to year x and the average team in Major League Baseball gets a positive contribution from its minor league system.  The Astros have had a positive number of wins with zero contribution from its minor league system.  So I have a hard time deeming this year failure.  I guess you could say that the contributions that they’ve gotten from their minor league system are Miguel Tejada, because they traded part of their farm system for him, and Jose Valverde, but I don’t think that they traded away their long term future to get some of these guys.  I don’t think that we’re going to look back on it – there wasn’t a lot of high ceiling prospects that they were giving away.  I’m very encouraged, I’ve never seen any of the guys actually play, but from what I hear about the guys that they drafted – and how high a percentage of them they got to wear Astros’ minor league uniforms – I’m very encouraged with the way draft went.  So I think this year was a net positive at the major league level without losing too much at the minor league level.

CFB: Speaking of the draft, you already said you liked a lot of the moves, what do you think about the Ross Seaton signing – all the incentives, paying over the mark, the scholarship, etc. – do you think that there is any long-term ramifications for how our draft goes because of that?  Do you think its set an expectation for people that we draft?

ZL: That’s a good point.  It’s very easy for me to say that it’s a good move and they should pay whatever they have to pay to get these guys in, when it’s not my signature on the checks.  I think that if Drayton McLane is willing to acknowledge that whatever he paid to Ross Seaton is going to save him. In say four years Yovanni Gallardo is a big pitching free agent and he would go for $20 million and that year Ross Seaton comes up to the big leagues and you’re paying him the league minimum.  If [Drayton McLane] realizes that it’s that gamble that’s going to make this team smart with its money, then I have no problem with it.  I think that – everything that I’ve read has said – the way to build your franchise is around the younger guys, instead of waiting around for those sixth year guys who are going to break the bank.

CFB: Definitely.  Ok, well, let’s talk about the younger guys for a second.  A lot of people though that the Hunter Pence we saw last year in 400 AB’s was the guy we were going to see this year, that Michael Bourn would be your ideal lead-off hitter, and JR Towles would replicate his little cup of coffee from last September.  They’ve largely been disappointments this year, but do you think that we should count them out? Or do you think that we just need to give them a little more time?

ZL: No.  I don’t think counting them out does any good.  Something kind of interesting I’ve noticed about Bourn [note: click that link] is that if you divide up the field for him, he has a SLG higher than the average NL lefty when he pulls the ball – and this is despite having a SLG that’s 30% lower than the average NL lefty even when you include pitchers.  To me, that tells me two things.  One is that he has some of that power that they were talking about.  When they brought him, they were talking about how good of a lead-off hitter he would be, but also that he was a guy that is capable of putting a charge into a few balls.  I mean if you watch his home runs, they’re all right down the RF-line, but they’re all legitimate home runs.  I think that a lot of it has been inexperience and that if I were a Michael Bourn fan or an Astros fan that I’d be encouraged by that.  The other thing it tells me is that his averages are so high when he puts the ball in play compared to his average, which means that he strikes out too much – I think that well all know that.  Whether that’s a discipline thing or something that can be taught, I think, will be a good way to evaluate the coaching staff.  I’m encouraged to see that he’s going to play winter ball this year, though.

CFB: Ok so what about Towles?

ZL: I mean you can’t read the statistics on him when he has the numbers he has.  The numbers are just so low, it just makes me think that he wasn’t ready.  Especially how well he is hitting in AAA -- I just think he was up too soon.  I didn’t notice that he has one really obvious hole that the pitchers couldn’t find last year, that everyone has found this year.  I think last year was a little bit fluky.

CFB: I’m going to lead a question that starts with Pence, but kind of opens up to the organization as a whole.  At the end of last year, Pence (I think I can recall of hand) had like a .380 BABIP, which for a 24 year old kid is pretty impressive since that is the numbers you’d expect from a Manny Ramirez or a Pujols.  So he seemed due for a little bit of a drop-off, but over the off-season, it seemed like the front office and the team just kept saying that “He’s gonna be Hunter Pence.  We’re going to have this huge threat in the middle.  We’re going to have five hitters who are power hitters.”  [Pence’s decline] was something you could see coming, somewhat.  Do you think that Pence will bounce back?  And do you think that these kind of advanced statistics and forms of economic analysis are used in the talent evaluations in the front office?

ZL: With Pence, I looked at the number after you sent it to me yesterday [note: I sent ZL a list of potential questions a head of time], so I appreciate you sending that to me.  With Pence, it’s half and half.  His ground ball numbers are so high compared to the NL average.  I measured them at 52%, compared to the NL average, which is 44%, as a whole.  He was hitting a LD ever 5 PA last year compared to 8 this year.  So it’s half that and it’s half that his BABIP, or really his BA on ground balls has gone down. .320 last year and .286 this year.  I don’t know if .320 on ground balls in play is something that you can replicate.  I don’t know how much to read into that as being luck and how much to read as he just hits the ground balls harder.  It’s not just a natural drop off, it’s definitely something he’s doing differently this year.  He’s being pitched different.  He’s being pitched much better this year.  The pitchers are figuring him out more and more.

As for the front office, I know that Tal Smith is a big, big statistics guy.  Just in his background there’s just so much of the numerical analysis.  With Ed Wade I kind of tell that he’s into – somewhat.  It mostly came up around draft time, when I had the most conversation with him and Bobby Heck about talent evaluation.  They said that they use statistics to a limited extent in the college evaluations.  They didn’t strike me as real high on it, or that it was the basis of their philosophy.

What follows is Part I of a projected three part interview with Chronicle columnist, Zachary Levine.  For those of you still unaware, he's the Chronicle's "Unofficial Scorer."  He has a regular Sunday column and daily updates at his Chron.com Blog.  These updates include Live Blogs for every game, excellent statistically orientated analysis of the team and players, and even some mind bogglingly hard trivia questions.  Zachary was gracious enough to entertain my questions via phone for nearly an hour and I thank him for his time, insight, and generally enjoyable conversation about baseball.  This is the get to know you part of the interview.

Crawfish Boxes: You obviously utilize a lot of statistics in your articles and blogs, and the article you wrote on Bolt and Phelps hinted at a strong physics background.  What is your education background?

Zachary Levine: I was a math major in college.  The physics is not really my thing, it was just some spur of the minute research.  I took one physics class in high school; really enjoyed it, but it was never really my thing.  For the [math] major there were [counts out the courses] about 8 courses that were required and then there five electives (so you had to have 13 for the major).  So I tried to take as many of the electives as possible in statistics.  So I’ve taken...I’d say four or five statistics courses, because I kind of new that whatever I did, I didn’t really want to go into the theoretical aspects of mathematics or academia -- or really whatever being a professional mathematician encompasses.  I wanted something with a little bit more...I guess the commonly used term is “real-world application.”  So I thought statistics was the way to go.  I was into math way before I was into sports writing, or anything like that.  I pretty much grew up knowing that math was what I was really into and the writing came much later. 

CFB: So your career plan didn’t necessarily entail sports writing?

ZL: No, I went to college knowing that I was going to be a math major and really without much of a plan for what to do.  I had always been into sports (both playing and watching), but I wasn’t until I tried for the volleyball team -- that was actually my best sport when I got to college -- didn’t make the team (had a really bad try-out) and I needed another extra-curricular activity just because I didn’t want to study through all of college.  I did a lot of work, but didn’t want to make the only part of the college experience, so I went to the school newspaper.  I thought it would be a good way to stay involved with sports even if I wasn’t a player.  I was a writer, then I was a columnist, then I was editor, then I was back to being a columnist...so it all took off from that.

CFB: So from there you went to the Chronicle or did you did you have to do some...uh...

ZL: Yeah. I was an intern at the Chronicle in 2005, between the sophomore and junior years of college.  Then, in 2006, before my senior year of college, I was intern for MLB.com.  I covered the Philadelphia Phillies for the summer.  And so in 2007, after I graduated (which would be about 16 months ago) I was hired by the Chronicle and I started July of 2007.  So it’s been a year and a month.

CFB: So when you got to the Chronicle, did you immediately pitch them your statistics heavy column?

ZL: We did it together, because it was sort of...everyone...we all decided that it was (and it came up in serious conversations and in jokes) so rare to have some to with math background in a writing field -- it’s just sort of a weird combination -- so we tried to take advantage of that.  The first thing that started was the blog.  Which started about...probably no more than 3 or 4 weeks after I got there.  Once we did the redesign of page two in January, it became a Sunday column as well.  It was a mutual decision.  It wasn’t like I presented them a sales pitch or anything like that.  It’s just something came up in a bunch of conversations.

CFB: How do feel a statistics heavy blog -- and especially the column in the paper -- have been received by Houston readers?

ZL: Definitely mixed.  I think there’s a lot of people who appreciate it as complement to what the beat writers are doing and what our columnists are doing.  If anyone’s just reading what I’m doing, they’re getting a very bad picture of sports, because for anyone to think that statistics tells the whole story -- or the tiny part of statistics that I present -- tell anything close to the whole story, they're definitely not getting anywhere close to it.  But, I like to think of what I do as a sort of just a complement to what everybody else is doing -- the actual covering of the Astros’ beat or whatever sports the statistics are talking about and a complement to the opinion pieces that we write all the time too.

CFB: I know you do some stuff with the Rockets’ statistics and the Astros, of course.  What kind of sites or books or information to do you use to get your ideas to write a stats heavy column?

ZL: It’s more that I have a lot of research tools that I use.  A lot of the ideas come from my own head or conversations or simple things like reading box scores.  I use RetroSheet and Baseball-Reference for some of the historical data and I use Hardball Times a lot for some of the more advanced statistics.  The problem that I face in doing what I do, is that I have to balance the use of statistics with sort of the overuse of really advanced statistics.  I can’t lose people.  Our Sunday paper goes out to...whatever our Sunday circulation is, and I want it to be interesting to people already take an interest in sports statistics, but I want it to be accessible to everybody.  I sort of try to tone down the level of advanced statistics that I’ve been using or give a good explanation.

CFB: For evaluating hitters, what’s your favorite statistic to look to?

ZL: My favorite one to look to, I guess, is OPS.  It’s simple enough that you can explain it to people and people can understand it.  Something like EqA or some of the other ones, I think, sometimes lose people.  But OPS has sort of become a common enough term in the “Baseball Dictionary” to a lot of -- I don’t want to say really casual fans, but a lot of regular fans -- and it still tells very a close story.  There’s still a high correlation between team OPS and team offensive success and it’s higher than...say batting average.

CFB: What about for pitchers?

ZL: Pitchers are tough.  I have trouble using one for pitchers, because I can use OPS against.  For pitchers and for hitters, I like to use...Baseball-Reference’s plus statistic, which adjusts for ballpark, league, and era, for both OPS and ERA.  I like to use the plus stat.  For pitchers, I find that if I use ERA to much it can very misleading with things like a guy gives up an error and then gives up 5 more runs and they’re all unearned.  For instance, I think it’s Wandy Rodriguez, at least in one outing at the beginning of the year, he gave up a ton of unearned runs and he’s looked better than he has based on ERA.  But then if you use something like OPS against, your not taking into account that if he has a high OPS against, but a low ERA, it means he’s doing well as a situational pitcher -- usually.  So I usually have to try and find a balance and I have trouble using just one stat.