Houston Is Dealing with an Astro-Nomical Number of Injuries

Injuries are an ever-present factor in baseball. They lurk everywhere, just at the periphery of the game. They pop up seemingly at random, when things couldn’t get any worse and also when they’re going incredibly well. They strike without rhyme or reason. But if you’re an Astros fan, none of that is going to make you feel better at the moment, because Houston’s sudden injury flare-up couldn’t be coming at a worse time.

The most recent deluge of bad news on the Gulf Coast isn’t about the team’s inconsistent play, though that’s surely worrisome. They’ve gone 5-5 over their last 10 games, and they didn’t have a lot of runway to play with in the first place. They’re seven games out of first place in the AL West. Even worse, recent injury news has them reeling at the time they can least afford it.

José Urquidy started the year on the IL, part of a planned wave of reinforcements the Astros hoped would give them a rotation buffer in case of unexpected news. But that plan hit a snag when Urquidy left a May 24 rehab start with pain in his forearm. Today, the Astros confirmed a report from earlier in the week that Urquidy will undergo Tommy John surgery. He’s out for the season, and most of the next one too.

Before the season, that might not have seemed like an insurmountable issue for the team’s 2024 chances. Urquidy was fifth among Astros starters in projected innings and sixth in projected WAR. His ERA projection was ninth out of the 10 starters we assigned playing time. He’s the stereotypical bulk guy. Urquidy has soaked up innings for the team with acceptable but unexciting run prevention numbers for his entire major league career.

Factor in Ronel Blanco’s early-season emergence, and you might expect the ‘Stros to be fine on pitching. But that’s not how things have worked out. Hunter Brown has gotten absolutely shelled. His 6.18 ERA reflects some bad luck, but it’s not just that; he’s looked plenty bad in the early going. His strikeout rate is down from last year, his walk rate up. He’s given up 11 homers already, and batters are making loud contact when he challenges them with fastballs. That follows a rough end to last season, making his future trajectory unclear.

He’s not the only one having problems. Justin Verlander has been ordinary, the first time I’ve ever been able to say that about him. Framber Valdez can’t buy a strikeout. Blanco, meanwhile, has cooled off since his incandescent start. That’s not to say that he’s bad, but if you first learned about him when he burst onto the scene with 15 one-hit innings, you might have gotten the wrong image in your head. He’s more like a nice mid-rotation starter than an ace in terms of 2024 performance, and projection systems concur. Spencer Arrighetti, a prospect our team described as “on the starter/swingman line,” has made nine starts with disastrous results (5.98 ERA) but reasonable underlying stats (3.71 FIP, 3.99 xFIP, 4.29 xERA), and he’s been one of the better options. It’s rough out there.

Even worse, the Astros suffered another injury blow early in the year that itself has resurfaced. Cristian Javier, a rotation regular for the past two seasons, has already hit the IL twice this year. That has turned out the way repeat IL stints so often do: with UCL reconstruction. Chandler Rome reported that Javier will have Tommy John surgery this week and miss the remainder of the season.

Javier burst onto the scene with an electric 2022 conversion to starting. His precise, riding fastball leads to a steady diet of pop ups and the occasional homer. It’s a scary style, but an effective one when he’s on. He’s part of the group of unheralded older pitchers (along with Valdez, Urquidy, and now Blanco) who have kept Houston’s staff humming even while they’ve missed on higher-profile prospects.

They could use a few more gems like Javier and Urquidy. The Houston rotation is 29th in WAR this year (and 22nd in RA9-WAR — this isn’t some ERA-FIP gap thing), and now they’re down two important options. Lance McCullers Jr., J.P. France, and Luis Garcia are all on the IL, though all are expected to pitch at some point this year. The margin for error keeps going down.

Luckily for the Astros, that margin still isn’t zero, because they came into the season with plenty of rotation options. They still have a reasonable five-man rotation even with Javier and Urquidy down for the count. But there will be no more performance-related demotions or kid gloves. Valdez, Verlander, Brown, Blanco, and Arrighetti are the last line of defense.

McCullers might be back by the end of this month to help stabilize that group somewhat. That means that this month is going to be make-or-break for the Astros. If they continue to pitch like they have all year, a playoff berth is a distant possibility. The Houston offense is heating up, but with such a meaningful hole to dig out of, the team needs some help from its rotation. That help will have to come from the five pitchers they have, not the 10 they planned on using.

Unfortunately, the offense might need some short-term reinforcements too. Kyle Tucker fouled a ball off of his foot on Monday night and collapsed in pain immediately. He’s walking around on crutches. But in a great reminder that professional athletes are nothing like us, manager Joe Espada expects Tucker back in a handful of days. Put me on crutches, and I’m having someone bring water to my bed in a sippy cup for at least a week.

A few days, or even a week, without Tucker isn’t the end of the world. That’s akin to a starter missing a turn in the rotation. Hitter injuries matter on longer timescales; the plate appearances start to stack up when you’re missing two weeks or a month. Most contending teams would ask their MVP hopeful hitter to play it safe and make sure to get healthy before returning. Getting Tucker back for a game the day he ditches his crutches is a small win; re-aggravating the injury because it wasn’t fully healed would be a gigantic loss. The chance of that, however remote, urges caution, all else being equal.

Tucker might be feeling the urgency, though. The Astros as a team are surely feeling it. The last time they didn’t win the AL West was the injury-shortened 2020 season. The last full season they didn’t take home the crown was 2016. But daylight is burning, and the Houston roster is thinning out day after day. Never say never, but if they pull this one off, it’ll be one of the greatest recovery acts of this Astros team’s impressive decade-long run.