Houston, We Have an Injury Problem

The normal flow of a baseball season inevitably includes injuries. The dog days of summer usually come with a star or two on the shelf. It’s a long year, and roster depth matters more and more as the months advance. But sometimes, injuries don’t occur at predictable intervals. Sometimes it’s April 14 and half your roster is on the IL. Just ask the Astros.

On Monday, Houston placed Tatsuya Imai and Jeremy Peña on the IL. That followed two moves from last Friday, when Cristian Javier and Jake Meyers both hit the IL. Five days before that, staff ace Hunter Brown landed on the IL himself with a shoulder strain that will keep him from throwing for at least two weeks, and likely prevent him from appearing for far longer than that. And that’s just the in-season injuries. Josh Hader, Zach Dezenzo, Bennett Sousa, and Nate Pearson all started the year on the IL. Brandon Walter, Ronel Blanco, and Hayden Wesneski are still working their way back from elbow injuries sustained in 2025. That’s 12 players on the IL if you’re counting at home, and a number of stars among them.

It’s not like every injury matters the same. Pearson has never appeared for the Astros and has a negative career WAR. Dezenzo is a fifth outfielder. The core missing names for Houston are Brown, Imai, Peña, Hader, Javier, and, to a lesser extent, Meyers. If the Astros can’t replace the production from those five, all of whom are key parts of their roster, 2026 will be a long year. So let’s consider how each affects Houston’s prognosis in isolation, and then consider them all in concert.

Peña’s injury is the one the Astros are best-equipped to deal with. Thanks to last season’s Carlos Correa trade and a quiet offseason, Houston came into this year with an infield logjam. Peña, Correa, Isaac Paredes, and Jose Altuve gave the team four good players for only three spots. None could reliably flex to DH because of the presence of Yordan Alvarez. Altuve spent some time in the outfield last year, even before Correa arrived.

So far this season, Houston has found playing time for all four, but it hasn’t always been easy. Peña missed a bit of time with an unrelated thumb injury to start the year, which let Correa play short. Other days, Alvarez rotated to left field to allow Altuve to DH, with Paredes filling in at second. Between roster permutations and rest days, everyone got their fair share of playing time, but there were plenty of awkward defensive configurations involved in doing so.

Until Peña returns, I expect a much more straightforward depth chart. Altuve can now play second every day. Correa can play shortstop or third, and I expect him to keep performing double duty. When the Astros are looking for infield defense, backup infielder Nick Allen is a far superior option, one of the best defensive shortstops in baseball. That shifts Correa to third, Paredes to DH, and Alvarez to left. If they’re looking instead for outfield defense, Alvarez should DH. But that alignment is pretty easy, too: Paredes at third, Correa at short, Altuve at second.

Meyers’ injury hasn’t produced the same kind of lineup-altering reshuffle. Instead, Houston made a simple swap, calling up journeyman Taylor Trammell and plugging him directly into the starting lineup in center. He’s played every day since then – a pinch-hit opportunity the day he arrived, followed by three straight starts. This suggests to me that the Astros prefer his defense to that of Joey Loperfido, the team’s other option in center (and currently the starting left fielder). Brice Matthews and Shay Whitcomb are listed as infielder/outfielders, but both are converted infielders, so I don’t think they’re headed for center anytime soon.

It’s certainly not ideal to replace Meyers with Trammell, because Trammell is the definition of a replacement-level player; 0.1 WAR in 507 plate appearances across six seasons of major league experience. But, on the other hand, Meyers is no Peña; Peña accrued about as much WAR in 2025 as Meyers has racked up in his entire big league career. The real problem comes down to depth. Loperfido is Trammell’s backup, but he’s also starting in left. If Houston were to slide him over to center, Alvarez would have to play the field every day, something the team clearly isn’t comfortable with. And that’s before getting into rest days, or a backup for right fielder Cam Smith. As is so often the case, the first injury isn’t the one that gets you; it’s the injury to an injury replacement. If I were the Astros, I’d be looking to trade for depth outfielders, because the current squad has few options.

The big short-term issue for Houston isn’t the offense, which has been one of the best in baseball so far this year. The pitching, on the other hand, has gotten torched; the Astros are surrendering more than six runs a game. And that was with Brown, Imai, and Javier combining for eight of the team’s 17 starts. That’s not great!

Brown’s injury is a huge unknown. If he’s on the shelf for an extended period of time, the Astros rotation is going to be bad; they just don’t have enough good options to make up for missing their best pitcher. But losing Imai hurts, too. He’s been uneven to start the year, to put it mildly; a 7.27 ERA and a 25% walk rate are about as bad as it gets, but he’s missing bats and keeping the ball on the ground, two things that tend to stabilize quickly. Command has long been Imai’s weak point, and that’s something to keep an eye on this year when he returns, but despite his struggles, his absence is going to be a challenge for Houston.

The Astros’ RosterResource page currently lists four starters in the rotation: Lance McCullers Jr., Mike Burrows, Cody Bolton, and Colton Gordon. McCullers threw a total of 103 innings between 2022 and 2025, so it’s fair to say he’s not fully stretched out. Burrows, an offseason trade addition, looks like a mid-rotation starter at best, though he’s off to a slow start. Bolton is a Quad-A type in his fourth organization, and he’s also day-to-day with a back injury. Gordon, who made 14 replacement-level starts for the Astros in 2025, is getting called up to start Tuesday night’s game. This is not what you’d call an elite group.

Obviously, you need more than four members in a rotation, though because Houston’s starters have delivered so few innings this year – an average of just over four innings per game – the team has plenty of relievers stretched out. Ryan Weiss and J.P. France are starters by trade who are currently pitching in relief; either could slide into the rotation, and both are likely to cover starts in the coming weeks. Steven Okert and Christian Roa have also pitched bulk innings in the early going, but I don’t think either is likely to move to the rotation; they’re more likely to work as long relievers behind some of the fringier starters.

Houston’s minor league system also provides several options. Spencer Arrighetti, Miguel Ullola, and Jason Alexander are all pitching well this year in Triple-A – or at least, pitching passably well and remaining healthy. I expect to see several of them up over the next few weeks, though it’s anyone’s guess as to who gets the first shot and who gets the longest rope.

If I were the Astros, I’d be running my rotation by playing the hot hand. I don’t think that’s generally a good practice, but the truth is that it’s incredibly difficult to have certainty about which of their bevy of replacement-level options is best. All six of the most likely replacement candidates have similar ERA projections. For that matter, Bolton and Burrows do too, and even McCullers isn’t projected to be much better than that group. Even more confusing, two pitchers with the same true talent level aren’t guaranteed to pitch the same in a brief stint. Guys get hot and cold. Talent isn’t stationary. Noise is loud, but skill really does change.

Most of the time, that isn’t a huge deal. You have your top starters – they’re not getting demoted because of a bad game or three. You have your end-of-rotation arms and swingmen – they pitch out of necessity rather than with a set schedule, and if someone does well enough at the role over a period of weeks or months, he might get promoted into the circle of trust. But when you’re building the entire rotation out of swingmen, quickly determining who has it and who doesn’t is quite important.

To my eyes, Arrighetti has been in the best form in the early going. He’s a candidate for Wednesday’s start; the Astros haven’t announced starters for Wednesday or Thursday yet. The first player to get a chance isn’t necessarily going to be the one who keeps the job, though; it’s going to come down to who runs with it. For at least two weeks, and probably longer given the severity of Brown’s and Javier’s shoulder injuries, the Astros have a massive supply of available innings, and a desperate need not to sink further into the basement of the AL West.

Even when Imai returns, this is going to be a weak pitching staff. We had Houston down as a bottom-third group, and that was including Brown, who entered the season as a Cy Young contender. But the immediate future is the bleakest. Tread water for a few weeks, and the picture will brighten meaningfully. Lose two thirds of the games over that stretch, and the chances of playing in October will look quite remote indeed. Dan Szymborski’s look into the importance of early-season performance underscores the importance of avoiding dreadful starts. Even with unchanged team strength, Dan calculated that the Astros would see their playoff odds decline by 22 percentage points with a rough month. And to put it mildly, “unchanged team strength” doesn’t feel like a strong assumption at the moment.

Oh, yeah: The bullpen also needs some help. Hader is on track to face hitters sometime this week, but he’s been out since last August and the ‘pen has not performed well in his absence. Replacement closer Bryan Abreu has a double-digit ERA, and a double-digit FIP to match thanks to some home run problems. As a whole, the group has been worth -1.3 WAR so far. The Astros desperately need more arms, and also for their existing ones to perform better.

Taking this all in concert, I think it’s fair to say that the balance of this month is extremely important for the Astros. That’s not usually true. It’s still April. It’s too early to believe that we’ve learned much about player performance, even. But starting with the worst record in baseball and then losing most of your starting rotation is a special circumstance. The Astros are in danger of leaving themselves too tall a hill to climb if they continue to stumble through this month. I rarely sound the alarm so early, but rarely isn’t never, and this looks like a pretty severe test.