A better description of Brown’s statement was that they were completely expected. It seems very unlikely that the Astros will choose to trade off some of their best players because the team is mired in 4^th place. But the reason for that isn’t because of a choice that Dana Brown has made as general manager. Instead, it is based on a decision made by Jim Crane.

Right before Opening Day, I wrote how Jim Crane has made 2026 an “or else” season for the team. Crane demands a playoff appearance for his team. And the best evidence of Crane’s perspective was the fact he chose not to give contract extensions to General Manager Dana Brown and Manager Joe Espada. The contracts for both expire at the end of the 2026 season.

Thus, it should not be surprising to anyone that Brown is signaling that he is focused on winning in 2026 over gaining value for future seasons. Brown—and Joe Espada—are working under the guidelines that Jim Crane has set for them: only 2026 matters.

Playoff Bound?

Before Monday’s game in Anaheim, Brown said “I just don’t see us being sellers right now.”

Brown also specifically addressed speculation that the team would trade Jeremy Pena or Yordan Alvarez, stars who reach free agency after the 2027 and 2028 season respectively. “We’ve had zero discussions about trading Peña or Alvarez internally. We’ve had zero conversations.

What was Brown’s rationale for not wanting to be a seller at the deadline? The chance to get to the playoffs.

“To be sellers, for me, it would be like we failed. So I don’t think this team is a team that’s going to be sellers at the deadline. I think we’re good enough…The division is wide open, the postseason is wide open. So, I don’t foresee us being sellers.”

Why not trade Pena and Alvarez? “Those are two pillars on this team that I feel like is playoff bound,”

Can the Astros get to the playoffs this season? Brown said they just need to get healthy. ““I just think it’s a matter of time for us to collectively play multiple games in a row with our best players — which I don’t think has happened.”

It is not surprising that Brown sounded an optimistic note about the 2026 Astros, despite the team being on a 72-win pace and 5 games out of a division lead. Brown is often quite optimistic in his public statements about his team—essentially cheering for speedy recoveries from injuries and accelerated development from young players.

But it is also not surprising that Brown is focused on winning in 2026 and eschewing the possibility of seeking value for future seasons. Brown is not guaranteed to be here in any future seasons because of the choice made by his boss, Jim Crane. It is likely that the only way that Brown can get future seasons as the Astros GM is if the 2026 team starts playing better baseball and gets to the playoffs.

Sure, Brown is the one making the public statement. But his statements are compelled by his boss. Jim Crane wants to win in 2026 and Brown is a good employee. He is doing what his boss wants.

Three Paths. Limited Options

Last month, Dave Schoenfeld of ESPN wrote that “the Astros will face some difficult choices at the trade deadline. The front office will have three options: stay the course, do a soft rebuild or tear it down to the studs.”

Schoenfeld explains the rationale for each of these three scenarios and how they would play out.

He says that a “full teardown” would make sense based on “the age of some of the key players and the state of the farm system… With 2026 looking like a lost season, and the uncertainty of the labor situation looming over the 2027 season, the best road to long-term success for the franchise might mean extracting maximum value” from players such as Alvarez, Pena, and Hunter Brown.

A soft rebuild “being with admitting the 2026 season is likely a lost cause -- too many injuries, too many holes on the pitching staff, an offense that suddenly looks thin… There needs to be a talent realignment, with a need to acquire some young players because of the state of the farm system.” In this scenario, the Astors would trade some key players, and Schoenfeld mentions Christian Walker, Josh Hader, and Isaac Paredes as possibilities.

The “stay the course” argument is “that the Astros have been snakebit the past two seasons” by injuries to Yordan Alvarez and Josh Hader in 2025, and Hunter Brown and Carlos Correa in 2026. Thus, Schoenfeld writes “maybe it’s one of those seasons. All of the players above are under contract beyond this season, so that’s why you stay the course and keep everyone for 2027.”

As Astros can and should read through those choices and see the plausible argument for each of them, regardless of which path each of us prefers. All three plans are reasonable path for Dana Brown to choose as he approaches this year’s trade deadline.

Yet, one is clearly closed off not because Dana Brown thinks it is the wrong choice, but because Jim Crane has all but eliminated the possibility. Dana Brown has said the Astros are not going to tear it all down. But that is not exactly a path that Brown could choose.

Based on Brown contract expiring at the end of the year, it’s also likely that the soft rebuild option is also out. One could imagine re-jiggering the team to work better in the second half of the season by, for example, trading Isaac Paredes for a starting left fielder, but those deals are difficult to make. It is easier to trade an established regular for a potential one. Dana Brown can’t bet on potential. It may only help his successor to succeed.

Jim Crane’s Decision

Crane’s choice is rooted in his belief that the team should have made the playoffs in 2025 and that extra pressure was apparently needed to get Brown and Espada to push their team to a playoff appearance this season.

Crane has said that “as long as I’m here, the window is open.” But the team’s window was open from 2015 through 2025 not because of Jim Crane’s Jim Crane-ness, but because the franchise has a steady stream of high-quality young players stepping up each season, often replacing in a nearly like-for-like fashion older expensive players who left in free agency.

The lack of quality young players is certainly a failing of Dana Brown. He could have drafted Kevin McGonigle, Rookie of the Year favorite for the Tigers or Thomas White, a top pitching prospect for the Marlins, both of whom went within 10 picks of Brice Matthews. Some of the blame for the weak farm system goes to James Click as well. In the 2022 first round, he chose Drew Gilbert over Sal Stewart of the Reds and Dylan Beavers of the Orioles, both of whom are establishing themselves as quality regulars. Gilbert at least got us half of Justin Verlander in 2023.

The front office is in a poor position right now because it can only focus on the 2026 season. Is that the best course for this franchise. You may think yes, or you may think no. Dana Brown told us this week he thinks the answer is yes. Of course, it’s not surprising he said that. It’s what Jim Crane thinks, and he’s the one making that decision for the franchise right now.

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The good news about the Astros offense is that back in 2016, the Dodgers thought they needed Josh Fields to round out their bullpen as they pushed for the playoffs that season. In exchange—come on, you know who the Astros got in exchange. As Jules often writes on social media:

The bad news is that the offense as a whole is propped up heavily by Alvarez’s massive contributions this season. This isn’t a balanced, deep, multi-layered offensive juggernaut anymore. It’s a house of cards. Some others are making contributions—but the whole offense is propped up by Yordan Alvarez.

Let’s start by looking at the macro picture. If we look at the team’s overall metrics, the aggregate numbers paint a picture of an above average MLB offense:

The Astros are 11th in the majors in runs scored per game at 5.47. They probably should be a little higher in run scoring. The Astros are 6th highest in home runs and slugging, 7th in overall OPS, and 9th in team OPS+. These are all objectively good numbers in the context of 2026 baseball.1 The team does not walk as much as ideal (their 8.7% walk rate is 21st best in the majors), but they make up for that with big power; they are 7th in majors in isolated power at .165.2

But as I have framed this piece, all this good news about the offense is also met by some bad news. If you break down who is contributing to the team’s offense, one man stands out—Yordan Alvarez. As for everyone else…well, that’s a different story.

The Lone Titan and the Supporting Cast

The chart below shows the individual OPS+ for each prominent member of the Astros lineup this season. OPS+ takes OPS (On base Plus Slugging percentage), adjusts for park effects, and then normalizes the scale. 100 is exactly league average, and each unit above or below 100 is one percent better (or worse) than league average.

As a team, the Astros have a 104 OPS+, which means they are 4% better than league average. In the chart below, the dashed line shows that number.

Yordan Alvarez is sporting a mind-boggling 198 OPS+. He is effectively playing twice as well as a league-average major league hitter. The league average hitter is slashing .242/.319/.393. Alvarez is slashing .316/.428/.649. His batting average and slugging percentage are tops in the league, and he also leads the AL in home runs and OPS. He is lagging in on base percentage—he’s second in the AL behind Nick Kurtz of the A’s.

But if you look at the chart above, it shows that Alvarez is almost single-handedly pulling the Astros team average to the right (i.e. the good direction in this chart).

Alvarez is not full alone. Christian Walker has had a bounce back campaign, posting a 126 OPS+. He is also providing essential help to the lineup, and the inability of the front office to trade him this offseason for salary relief has actually paid off for the Astros.

Jeremy Pena has also been an offensive plus. He is slashing .298/.351/.433 for a 117 OPS+. Of course, that good news is tempered with bad news. Pena has been able to play in only 26 of the team’s 64 games this season due to injury.

But shockingly, only three Astros hitters are above the team’s average of 104 in OPS+.

The Drop-Off to the Underbelly

Most Astros hitters this season are clustered at or near league average.

Taylor Trammell (103) and Isaac Paredes (102) hover just above the league average mark. That’s a surprisingly good mark for Trammell (career OPS+ of 82) and a surprisingly poor mark for Paredes (career OPS+ of 114).

From there, it gets progressively worse:

• Christian Vázquez (95 OPS+): This is actually a surprisingly good number for Vazquez, who had a 60 OPS+ in his three seasons in Minnesota.

• Cam Smith (88 OPS+): A young player struggling to create value with his bat; he stays in the lineup for his glove.

• Jake Meyers (77 OPS+): This is Meyers’ worst offensive season since he lost his job and MLB roster spot in 2022.

• Yainer Díaz (67 OPS+): A shocking regression that has completely sapped the lineup of its expected catching depth.

• Brice Matthews (62 OPS+): Completely overmatched at this stage, offering almost no offensive utility.

In short, the Astros have a lot of unproductive at bats in the bottom half of the lineup every game. That’s when you can go to the kitchen to get another beer. You’ll also need a beer or four to watch these at bats.

A Yordan Dependent Offense

In the first 19 days of May, the Astros slumped offensively. They averaged 2.6 runs per game—less than half of their total across the entire season. Why did the team slump so much offensively? Well, during those 19 games, Yordan Alvarez slashed .209/.321/.373.

The Astros offense in 2026 is going as far as Yordan Alvarez can take them. When Alvarez slumped, so did the entire offense. When he is hot—like he has been for the periods outside of those 19 games in early May—he can prop up this entire offense.

Alvarez has been the best hitter in the American League in 2026. We are privileged to watch him hit.

But the overall Astros offense this season is dragged down by a set of hitters that lack overall depth. The team runs out four or five below average hitters in its lineup most nights. More depth is needed from the bottom half of the lineup.

But even without that, we get to watch Yordan Alvarez every night. And that’s pretty awesome.

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I frame today’s article in this way because it is easier to write about what is happening. One can write about a Team’s ERA or number of injuries pretty easily. These are identifiable facts and I was able to marshal those in the arguments I made in my articles yesterday and on Monday.

But it is more difficult to discuss what is not happening.1 You won’t find many other articles from Astros commentators on the lack of young stars because it is more difficult to write about what is not happening.

Yet, the fact the Astros have no young stars is one of the most important facts about the team right now. It is part of why they are well below .500 this season, and why the future does not look very strong for the franchise.

I’ll detail that argument below.

Few Young Players. No Young Stars

How many young players do the Astros have? The answer is very few.

You might think of Jeremy Pena as a young player, but he is 28.2 Yainer Diaz is another candidate for a young player, but he is 27, usually considered the peak age for a baseball player.

There are some important 26-year-old Astros in Spencer Arrighetti (who is having a good season) and Mike Burrows (who is not).

But the traditional definition of young in baseball is under the age of 25. If we use that measure, the Astros have one had three young players play for them this season. They are Cam Smith and newly called up Alimber Santa—who are 23—and Brice Matthews—who is 24.

If we expand the definition of young player to include those who are 25, that gets us two more players who have played for the Astros this season—platoon outfielder Zach Cole and reliever AJ Blubaugh.

None of these players really stands out. So far, Smith is the best by far, posting 1.3 bWAR this season. Most of Smith’s value comes from his excellent defense—he has posted 11 Defensive Runs Saved so far this season. But Smith is again posting a below average line at the plate—slashing .216/.310/.347 for a .657 OPS.

The Astros have gotten little from their other young players. Matthews has been a below average hitter at the plate; Blubaugh has been league average out of the bullpen, and Cole has .157 batting average in just 51 plate appearances. Santa has been the most promising, striking out 4 and walking none in his first 5 major league innings.

But put together, that’s not a lot of contributions from young players. And frankly, very few such players.

Other teams are getting more from their young players. Take for example our last 2 opponents. The Brewers have had 7 players in the age 24 or younger season play for them this season and 3 who are 25. The Pirates have had 8 players age 24 and under player for them this season and 2 who are 25.

The Astros are in a particular stretch of facing young (and good) starting pitchers. Sunday Brewer starter Jacob Misiorowski is 24; last night’s Pirates starter Bubba Chandler is 23 while tonight’s starter Paul Skenes is 24.

Young Stars Are Essential in Modern Baseball

To state the obvious, the Astros would be better off if they had Misiorowski on their team. Misiorowski has a 1.65 ERA in 12 starts this season, and leads the majors in strikeouts (108) and WHIP (0.79). They’d also be better off with Skenes on the team, even though he has a career high ERA of 2.89 this season. Skenes still leads the majors in strikeout to walk rate.

It would be good to have more good players on the team. But there is another important reason why a team needs young stars. Both Skenes and Misiorowski are making just above league minimum. Neither one has entered the salary arbitration process and thus, neither has any real leverage to get a salary anywhere commensurate with their value as a player.

As such, they are among the most valuable players in baseball.3 How are the Brewers able to win consistently despite running a low payroll? They are able to get disproportionate value from young stars. Baseball’s economic system limits the ability of players to earn their full value before they enter free agency after their sixth or seventh season. The arbitration allows for gradual raises for players in their 4th, 5th, and 6th seasons in the majors, but those are again less than full value.

The Brewers lead their division, and the Pirates are in playoff position right now because of their ability to extract value from young stars. The Brewers best players after Misiorowski are Brice Turang, a 4th year defensive wiz at second base developed in the Brewers system, and Kyle Harrison, a seemingly lost prospect with the Giants and the Red Sox who the Brewers pitching lab turned around. The Brewers are cheap and good.

The Pirates of course have Skenes, who won the Cy Young award last season, and a young pitching staff that includes Chandler, Jared Jones (recently returned from Tommy John surgery), and new star shortstop Konnor Griffin.4

The Astros have Cam Smith and some bullpen pieces; maybe a platoon outfielder. Again, it’s not a lot.

If you look at how the Astros built the cores that won them the World Series in 2017 and again in 2022, it was a set of homegrown players. The 2017 team was anchored with Jose Altuve, Alex Bregman, Carlos Correa, and George Springer. All came through the Astros farm system. The 2022 team needed to replace Correa and Springer, and did so with core pieces such as Yordan Alvarez, Kyle Tucker, Framber Valdez, and Cristian Javier.

Today’s Brewers and Pirates look more like those Astros world champions than do the current Astros. The lack of young stars is hurting the team this season.

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In light of that, I’ll publish multiple articles this week trying to summarize the big themes of the 2026 Astros season to this point. There should be one a day for each weekday this week. Today, it’s the injuries.

You’re not just imagining it. The Astros have suffered a lot of injuries this year. How many? Baseball Prospectus tracks the effects of a team’s injuries at their Injury List Ledger. The figure below shows what you probably suspected based on feel: The Astros lead major league baseball in games lost of the injured list.

Astros players have missed a total of 742 games in the 2026 season. That’s 37 more games lost to the IL than the second place Dodgers. Since the Astros have played 61 games total this season, that means the Astros have had an average of 12.2 players on the injured list each game this season.

That hurts a team, doesn’t it? Intuitively, you the answer is yes. And the good new is that the analytics confirm your gut instinct. The Injury List Ledger also measures the amount of WARP (Wins Above Replacement Player) each team has lost due to injuries. WARP is Baseball Prospectus’s catch-all statistic for overall value, combining contributions at the plate, on the mound, and in the field. And again, the Astros lead the majors in value lost due to injuries.

Baseball Prospectus’s calculations say that the Astros have lost 5.0 Wins due to having players on the injured list. The chart above helps show you how big a gap that is on the average time, which has lost right around 2 wins due to injuries. The Astros have lost 3 more wins than most of those team. In fact, only three other teams have lost more than 3 wins to injuries.

The Astros stand at the top, and do so by a healthy—or should I say unhealthy—margin.

A Full Roster of Injured Players

How many injured player have the Astros had. Well, you could make an entirely lineup out of the Astros position players who have spent time on the injured list this season.

1. 1. Jeremy Pena ss (35 days on IL)

2. 2. Jose Altuve dh (13 days on IL and counting)

3. 3. Carlos Correa 3b (25 days and out for season)

4. 4. Yainer Diaz c (25 days on IL and counting)

5. 5. Joey Loperfido lf (42 days on IL and counting)

6. 6. Zach Dezenzo 1b (40 days on IL)

7. 7. Taylor Trammell rf (35 days on IL)

8. 8. Jake Myers cf (40 days on IL)

9. 9. Nick Allen 2b (15 days on IL)

I don’t know if that team would get to the playoffs, but I think it could finish .500 if it got good pitching. And it is a clear sign of how deep the injury issues have been for the Astros this season that you can make an entire legitimate starting lineup out of those on the injured list in just the first 61 games of the season.

And it gets worse when you look at the pitching staff.

There are several reasons for that, but it starts with the fact that Hunter Brown, the team’s ace, has only made two starts this season and has been on the IL for 58 games (and counting). Brown is making rehab starts in the minors and should be back relatively soon, but the rotation has been gasping for stability ever since he went out back in early April.

Part of that rotation instability is because the injuries to starting pitchers are not limited to Brown. Cristian Javier made 3 poor starts this season and then went on the IL on April 9, the same fateful road trip where Brown went on the IL. Lance McCullers held out for 8 starts, but an injury and ineffectiveness chased him from the rotation.

Tatsuya Imai also was on the IL for 30 days in April and May with right arm fatigue. The good news is that Imai has returned from the IL and has thrown 2 straight quality starts. The bad news is that the injuries to the rotation have compelled the Astros to give starts to pitchers such as Ryan Weiss (7.62 ERA), Jason Alexander (9.33 ERA), Cody Bolton (5.40 ERA) and Colton Gordon (11.57 ERA). Those ERAs give you a sense of how those efforts have gone.

The bullpen has suffered as well. Set-up man Bennett Sousa started the year on the IL, came back for 3 appearances, and then returned to the IL. From that standpoint, it’s better that Nate Pearson has now made 4 relief appearances since he returned from the IL. Enyel de los Santos’s IL stint was relatively mild in comparison—missing only the first 12 games of the season.

Hader’s Return

Of course, I have saved the biggest bullpen injury—Josh Hader’s—for last. Hader is the team’s closer and one of the highest paid relievers in baseball. He has not pitched at all this season, and his injury—and Bryan Abreu’s ineffectiveness—have left an unstable situation at the back end of the bullpen.

Hader was injured in 2025 and his shoulder issues lingered into 2026, keeping him off of the mound. Hader’s injury in 2025 was particularly painful for the Astros, as it seemed to be the last straw that broke the team’s pitching staff. The Astros succeeded in the first half of 2025 thanks to the depth of their bullpen, but that depth collapsed in the second half of the season when Hader (and Sousa) went on the IL. The team missed the playoffs by one game.

This is a fortuitous day to write about the Astros injuries because Josh Hader is expected to be activated today. There are lots of reasons to think that the 2026 Astros are worse than recent versions of this team. I’ll address more of these reasons in the next two days and injuries will continue to hurt the offense with Correa out for the season. But the formula for success in 2025 was built from the back of the pitching staff to the front, centered on Hader.

In 2025, Hader had a 2.05 ERA, striking out 76 batters and walking only 16 in 52.2 high leverage innings. Could he return to those levels?

My guess is that it is unlikely—he is older and coming off of a long injury. But Hader’s absence so far in 2026 has crippled the team’s bullpen. The hope is that he can restore the team’s bullpen as closer.

And even if Hader is not as good as last season, it will be good to see him on the mound in 2026. This season has been marked by so many injuries. Hader on the mound in the 9th this week is a sign that the worst is over. Hopefully.

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In light of that, I’ll publish multiple articles this week trying to summarize the big themes of the 2026 Astros season to this point. There should be one a day for each weekday this week. I start by examining the most important theme of the 2026 Astros season—the collapse of the pitching staff.

The big task for the Astros front office this offseason was to find more pitching. As I wrote just before the season started, “the theme was acquiring pitching from a wide variety of sources.”

Needless to say, it has not gone well.

As they woke up on Sunday morning, the Astros stood 29th best in the majors in ERA. That’s not good. “Well,” you might say, “ERA isn’t the best indicator of true pitching talent.” And that’s correct. FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching) is a better measure. And the Astros are also 29th there as well.

The chart below (from a Web App created by Will Harris, who gets a tip of the cap) shows each team’s ERA (up and down axis) and FIP (left to right axis). You want to be bottom left. The Brewers, Yankees, and Dodgers are among the best pitching staffs in baseball. You do not want to be top right with the Rockies, National, Athletics, and Reds. And yet, that’s where the Astros are.

What’s gone wrong with the pitching? The cart below shows some important pitching stats and they tell a pretty simple story. The Astros are the worst in majors in allowing walks and throwing balls. That number has inflated the team’s WHIP (walks and hits per innings pitched). One way to address walks is by lots of strikeouts, but the ability of Astros pitching to strike out batters has declined—they are only 18th best in the majors in striking out batters. They also have had a disproportionate share of fly balls leave the yard this season.

Put it all together and you have too many runners on base and too many of those runners coming home on home runs. It adds up to what we’ve seen this season—lots and lots of scoring the Astros opponents.

The New Acquisitions Have Done Poorly

Collectively, Astros pitchers have contributed just one run above replacement under the bWAR measure. Again, that’s not very good.

Twenty-six different hurlers have already taken the mound for the Astros this season and among them, only 12 have a positive Wins Above Replacement. That means that 14 Astros pitchers—a majority of those who have toed the rubber in 2026—have contributed less than a proverbial replacement player.

Again, the sabrmetric term for this is not good.

The front office focused on pitching in the offseason, bringing in a number of pitchers from a wide variety of sources to address the gap in the rotation created by the departure of Framber Valdez and the injuries that hampered the pitching staff in 2025.

Tatsuya Imai was the team’s major rotation addition this offseason, signing a mid-priced free agent contract. Imai has had a difficult transition from the NPB to MLB, and went on the Injured List after a blowup start in Seattle in early April that boosted his ERA to 7.27. He has steadied things since returning from the IL and has had quality starts in each of his last two outings. But his lack of strikeouts 22.2 makes it hard to think he will be a high level starting pitcher.

Mike Burrows was acquired in a trade for a pair of the Astros better prospects to be a rotation mainstay. Burrows has been a mainstay in rotation in the sense that he has made his start every turn of the rotation. And in the fact that he has not been a very effective pitcher. He has a 5.40 in 11 starts and has allowed 13 homers—the most of any pitcher in the majors.

Ryan Weiss was signed after an excellent year in the Korean Baseball Organization to provide depth to the Astros pitching staff. He has not lived up to that expectation. Instead, Weiss has an ERA of 7.62 in 26 innings pitcher, having walked 20 batters. Weiss has the lowest bWAR on the team (-1.0) and has been sent down to Sugar Land.

As noted, these three are not the only pitchers who have underwhelmed for the Astros. Both Lance McCullers and Cristian Javier have been a combination of ineffective and injured. Pitchers like Cody Bolton and Jayden Murray have shuttled back and forth to Sugar Land, while Bennett Sousa, Jason Alexander, and Colton Gordon have not performed as well as they did in 2025.

But I highlight Imai, Burrows, and Weiss because they were sought out this offseason by the front office to address the holes in the rotation caused by departures and injuries. The goal of the front office this offseason was to boost the depth of the pitching staff. They clearly have not achieved that goal.

Not every offseason depth acquisition has failed. The front office picked up Kai-Wei Tang after the Giants DFA’ed him and he has turned into an asset, posting a 2.57 ERA and moving into the rotation. Nate Pearson was signed as a reclamation project and he has been good in his first few bullpen appearances since returning from the IL.

But overall, the front office tried an offseason strategy of signing a whole bunch of guys to address the holes they identified in the pitching staff. For the most part, the offseason acquisitions have not covered those holes. They have only expanded them.

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That’s the version of his profile that matters. The bat speed has never been in doubt; the question is whether he can access it consistently enough for the rest of his game to show up. When he does, the contact shifts from forced loft to line drives with real carry. The underlying projection still frames him as volatile: power, speed, and defensive flexibility paired with a strikeout rate that sits at the center of his outcomes. ZiPS sees the ingredients of a useful regular, but also the swing-and-miss risk that caps the slash line. It projects 1.3 WAR and 14 home runs the rest of 2026, essentially a bench-plus regular if the contact holds.

Spring only sharpened that tension. Joe Espada has moved Matthews across second base, shortstop, and the outfield, partly out of necessity, partly because his athleticism makes the experiment viable. The appeal is clear: if the at-bats stabilize, he becomes a legitimate lineup piece with defensive flexibility rather than a toolsy extra deployed situationally. With Carlos Correa out for the season, the Astros don’t have much choice but to explore that upside.

Matthews followed that controlled performance with a more apparent noise, converting discipline into damage. That matters because it complicates the takeaway. One game was about avoiding the spiral; the next showed what happens when he avoids it and still gets to impact. That’s the line between a hitter who manages his flaws and one who starts forcing his way into a larger role.

The risk hasn’t changed. The strikeout rate remains the axis of his profile, and pitchers will continue to attack him as someone whose at-bats can be stretched and exposed. Two strong games don’t erase that. But this is what the optimistic version looks like: avoid early-count trouble, keep the swing on time, and let the bat speed and athleticism work. If that holds, the rest can follow.

Back-to-back performances like these clarify the path. If Matthews lives in 0–2 counts, he’s a utility piece with tools. If he can sustain this version, shorter decisions, cleaner timing, less desperation, the Astros may have something more: a legitimate multi-positional regular whose value extends beyond raw traits.

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Carlos Correa said that he “took a swing and just felt a pop. It completely snapped on me. Fell to the ground and couldn’t put any weight on it. I felt a loud pop. I heard it and felt it. Right away, I knew something was wrong.”

How wrong was that something. Correa will soon have surgery and that ankle that will keep him out for the rest of the 2026 season.

Correa’s injury is the latest in a long series of injuries that have inflicted the 2026 Astros. Closer Josh Hader has been out all season with biceps inflamation. Opening Day starter Hunter Brown had shoulder soreness in his third start this year. Jeremy Pena was out of the opening day lineup due to a broken finger and later suffered a hamstring strain. Starting pitcher Cristian Javier is also suffering from a shoulder injury, while offseason free agent pickup Tatsuya Imai has a tired arm. Jake Meyers has been out for several weeks with an oblique injury. Platoon outfielder Joey Loperfido has a right quad strain.

And to add injury to yet another injury, Yainer Diaz also got hurt at batting practice this week, suffering a significant oblique strain. Yesterday, starter Lance McCullers tore a part of the fingernail off of his pitching hand during the blowout loss to the Dodgers.

The human mind seeks out recognizable patterns in an effort to create an explanation. That is, we want to know why. This would be true for any fan base whose team is beset by so many injuries. It is especially true for the Astros, whose huge bevy of injuries cost the team a playoff berth in the 2025 season.

The truth is we are unlikely to find a satisfactory explanation for so many injuries. The answer is that they just happened.

Certainly, it is worth the Astros front office and conditioning staff trying to figure out if they should change some of their practices to reduce the possibility of injury. If they want to stretch more or stretch less, if they want to alter their rehab practices, if they find that yoga or transcendental meditation help, that could have some value.

But it seems the effect of anything like that is marginal. For example, the team replaced their head athletic trainer after the injury plagued 2025 season. That has not had the desired effect of reducing injuries.

The injuries have affected a wide variety of body parts and have happened in a wide variety of ways. Tweaks in training routines may have stopped one or two injuries, but it’s hard to think they would stop the entire deluge.

The best explanation is the simplest for us to understand—the baseball gods have not favored the Astros. Sometimes they have. Right now they are not. We curse these fickle monsters.

Why do the baseball gods afflict some teams and not others? No one has figured that out in the 180 years since Alexander Cartwright and the New York Knickerbocker club took a ferry to the Elysian Fields of Hoboken, NJ for the first game. The fickelness of the baseball gods will flummox fans 180 years from now when Cyborg Correa goes on the injured list for a busted sprocket.

It is a part of the game.

And while the game is wonderful, this part—to use a term common in the sabrmetric community—sucks.

It especially sucks for the Astros in 2026. The team is hobbled significantly by these injuries, losing their ace, their closer, their shortstop, and a middle-of-the-order hitter. And those are just the headliners, as the team has also seen injury list stints for multiple starting pitchers, platoon options, utility infielders, potential set-up men, and a variety of pitchers.

The team can manage an injury at third base better than just about any other position, as Correa’s injury resolves the playing time logjam created by rostering three starting level corner infielders.

But that is cold confort to Astros fans, seeing one of the team’s top players gone for five months of the season. The team is undoubtedly worse without Correa.

The 2026 season was set up to be a pivotal one for the Astros, as they were going to push for the playoffs because they have a good deal of top level talent and because they lack good young players. 2026 is another season where the Astros prioritize the current season because it looked to be more promising than a season into the future.

The 2026 Astros did not enter the season as one of the best teams in baseball, but they were going for it this year because the dearth of high quality prospects and good young players on the team meant that this season was likely to be better than future ones.

Instead, the Astros have gotten off to a terrible start to the season. Injuries are a big cause of that poor start, as the team has been compelled to rely on a wide variety of AAA filler for major league innings and plate appearances. The players who have stayed healthy—especially the pitchers—have performed worse than expectations. Astros pitching has the highest ERA in baseball by far.

It is unclear that the Astros could overcome their poor performance on the mound if they had a healthier roster. I know that their ability to climb out of the hole in the standings is much worse because they are only fielding half of a major league team.

I also know the baseball gods remain as fickle as the ancient gods—making seemingly arbitrary decisions on who to favor and who to torment without rhyme or reason. It is and likely always will be so.

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In other words, this weekend in Boston was very much the opposite of what we have seen so far this season from the Astros.

Winning a Series

The Astros have a losing record, standing at 14-21 after the 3-1 extra inning win on Sunday in Boston. That’s not good. And when you lose a lot of games, you lose a lot of series. And while it only seems like the Astros lose every series 2 games to 1, the Astros have only lost 6 series this season. Of course, they have won only 4 (and tied 1).

The Astros have a .400 winning percentage across all games this season and a .400 winning percentage in series. Yeah, it’s not good.

That’s why Sunday felt like such a pleasant surprise. The Astros keep seeming to find ways to lose. And the fact that Sunday was going to be a bullpen game only increased worry among Astros fans. Yet the pitchers rallied to the occasion, holding the Red Sox to only 1 run across 10 innings and giving the offense enough time to finally get a hit with a runner in scoring position, when Cam Smith drove in two with a shot off the Green Monster.

Losing a series only seemed inevitable. In reality, they were able to pull this one out.

A Slumping Offense

The big issue over the weekend was the run production. The Astros scored just 9 runs, 3.0 per game. They lost the Friday game because of their offense, and required a heroic effort on Sunday by the pitching staff because the offense did not break out until extra innings.

Over the season, the offense has not been the problem. The Astros have scored 5.1 runs per game.

Once you get past run scoring, one can see that the bats were fine this weekend. The Astros had a slash line of .292/.366/.434 over the weekend. That compares to a season long slash line of .269/.348/.440. Better at batting average and on base percentage and essentially the same in slugging percentage.

How did they score so few runs this weekend? Sequencing. Astros bats were awesome with the bases clear or a runner on first—with a .330 batting average in those situations. They just happened to hit poorly with runners in scoring position, going 4 for 25, a .160 batting average.

Effective Pitching

If the hitting has not been the problem for the Astros this season, that means the pitching has been. On the season, Astros pitchers have allowed an ERA of 5.75. That’s really bad, right? Yes, it is not only the worst in the majors, but it is also the worst by two-thirds of a run. The Diamondbacks have the second highest team ERA at 5.07.

It was a different story over the weekend. Astros hurlers allowed only 7 runs at Fenway Park for an ERA of 2.33. And they of course won Sunday’s low scoring affair due to their ability to keep the Red Sox off the board.

On Sunday, the bullpen was very effective, allowing only 1 run across 7.2 innings. Over the entire weekend, Astros relievers allowed only 10 hits and 5 walks in 13.2 innings pitched, and limited Boston to 3 runs. That produced a 1.98 ERA.

Is that different? Yes, over the course of the season, the Astros bullpen has an ERA or 6.20. Again, this weekend was quite different.

An Effective Bryan Abreu

The poster boy for the Astros pitching struggles this season is Bryan Abreu. The Astros lead the majors in walk rate, and Abreu is a big contributor with 16 walks in 11 innings on the hill. Unfortunately, that wildness out of the strike zone has been combined with wildness in the strike zone, as Abreu has also allowed 4 homers in those 11 innings.

The Astros expected Abreu to be their closer while Josh Hader is on the IL and then settle into the high leverage role he has done so well since his 2022 breakout. Instead, he has allowed runs in 8 of his 12 appearances on the hill, prompting Joe Espada to find low leverage spots to use Abreu in an attempt to get him right.

The Astros could not avoid using Abreu in a high leverage spot yesterday, as the close games in the series meant that Bryan King was down and Enyel de los Santos was limited to one inning. Bryan Abreu took the hill to start the 9th inning of a tie game. Confidence was, well, where you would expect it to be.

But Abreu was effective in the 9th. He got a grounder and a strikeout from the first two batters, and then was able to walk around an infield single combined with his own error to retire Roman Anthony to get the game to the 10th inning.

The Astros staked him to a lead and thanks to a double play ball to shortstop Carlos Correa, Abreu finished the game off.

It was not a vintage Abreu performance. He struck out only 1 of the 8 batters he faced and allowed a walk and a hit batter, but it was effective enough. I don’t think that performance will push Abreu back up the leverage ladder, but it was essential to winning Sunday’s game and Sunday’s series. Baby steps.

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The Astros have 16 players currently on the IL. Is that a lot? Yes, it’s the most in baseball right now. And the most by 2 whole players. The Dodgers have 14 players on the IL—lucky bastards.

The chart below provides visual evidence (in lollipop form) of the Astros league leading status in this measure. It comes from the Injury List Ledger at Baseball Prospectus.

Would you like some better news? Baseball Prospectus also calculates how many “wins above a replacement player” injures have cost each team. Injuries have not cost the Astros the most wins this season by this metric. It’s cost them the second most behind the Blue Jays.

Yeah, that does not make me feel better.

The Astros knew they were entering Spring Training with several pitchers out for the start of the season as they recovered from Tommy John Surgery last season—that’s the fate of Hayden Wesneski, Ronel Blanco, and Brandon Walter.

Early in Spring Training, it became clear there was an issue with Josh Hader’s recovery from a shoulder injury last year. Bennett Sousa suffered an oblique strain in Spring Training. Nate Pearson, signed in the offseason as a potential swingman, recovered slowly from offseason elbow surgery.

The Astros worked out a plan over the offseason and Spring Training to deal with those injuries to the pitching staff. What has really hurt the Astros are the injuries the rotation has suffered during the season.

These began with the shoulder injury to staff ace Hunter Brown. There is no more essential player to the Astros in 2026 than Brown, and his injury has been difficult to overcome. But it was quickly followed by Cristian Javier suffering his own shoulder injury and leaving a start in Colorado. Tatsuya Imai had a terrible outing where he did not get out of the first inning and then went on the IL with a mysterious dead arm. These have been the most painful injuries to the team’s fortunes.

To add injury to other injury, Cody Bolton, who had made two spot starts to cover injuries in the rotation, suffered his own injury after being hit by a batted ball. Put all of that together, and that’s 10 Astros pitchers on the IL. You could make your own pitching staff out of just those players.

Astros hitters began the season in better shape, with only Zach Dezenzo starting the season on the injured list. But the injury bug soon hit the team’s top defenders. Jake Meyers suffered an oblique strain and went on the IL on April 9. Jeremy Pena joined him 3 days later with a hamstring strain.

In recent days, the injury bug moved to the Astros depth options in the lineup. Platoon bat Joey Loperfido went on the IL Saturday with a quad strain. Reserve infielder Nick Allen joined him Monday with a back strain.

By Tuesday, the injury bug started affecting the team’s injury replacements. Taylor Trammell, called up from Sugar Land to replace Jake Meyers on the roster, strained his groin. He is the sour 16th on the IL.

The Impact: Lots of AAA Guys in the Majors

Technically, the Astros have not added a player to the IL every day of the season. But considering the fact that they have 16 guys on the IL and have player 26 games, you are forgiven for feeling that way.

The impact of all of these injuries is clear. It has forced the Astros to rely on a series of guys who should be in AAA like Brice Matthews. Matthews was inserted into the game Sunday against the Cardinals and was picked off first before making an error at third base, In an ideal world, Nick Allen would have been the pinch runner and then entered at shortstop, pushing Carlor Correa to third base. Instead, Allen was unavailable due to his injury.

The Allen injury also shows the roster issues created by the injury issues. Allen was on the roster on Sunday primarily because the Astros lacked a viable player to put on the active roster. Because of the glut of injuries, the Astros only have 1 position player in their minors on the 40-man roster. And because when it rains, it pours, that player—Zack Cole—is on the minor league injured list.

The injury epidemic has compelled the front office to seek out players off AAA rosters in other organizations to join the Astros 26-man roster. Over the last week, the Astros have claimed Dustin Harris off waivers from the White Sox, traded a low-level minor leaguer to the Yankees for Braden Schewmake, and signed Daniel Johnson, Jr. to a minor league contract, and then activated him and started him yesterday in Cleveland.

In the rotation, the Astros have already had 10 different players make starts this season. In addition to the five players who started the season in the rotation, the Astros have started two of their prospects who started the season in Sugar Land (Spencer Arrighetti and Colton Gordon), one signed to a small major league contract this offseason (Ryan Weiss) and two signed to minor league contracts (Bolton and yesterday’s hero Peter Lambert).

If you are looking at all of these names and thinking I made them up, I don’t blame you. I’m not convinced that they are real either.

Relying on anonymous baseball journeymen is not ideal for obvious reasons—if these players were better, they would have a stead major league job. Jake Meyers might be a flawed player who strikes out too often and hits for a low batting average. But he is a major league regular because his excellent defense and occasional power give him value. It’s certainly greater value than Taylor Trammell or Daniel Johnson—assuming Johnson exists.

These issues are exacerbated when the injured player is an All-Star like Hunter Brown and Jeremy Pena. The drop off from Pena to Nick Allen or from Brown to Ryan Weiss is large. And the reliance on anonymous AAA relievers such as Christian Roa, JP France, and Jayden Murray—all who have pitched on the active roster this year to cover injuries—exacerbates slumps like we’ve seen from better pitchers such as Bryan Abreu.

The injuries have tested the depth of this Astros team and the did not have much depth anyway. The team is off to a poor start primarily because of a terrible performance by the pitching staff, even from its healthy members intended to be on a Daiken Park mound. But the injuries, both to the pitching staff and the defense, have exacerbated this poor pitching.

Injuries happen in baseball. I just wish they would happen in a more normal manner for the Astros.

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1. They did win that one game in West Sacramento.

2. They scored 6 or more runs in half of games on the trip.

3. Most of their regulars on offense didn’t get put on the IL.

4. Some of the regulars in the rotation did not go on the IL.

5. The players got lots of exercise.

6. It’s over.

Yeah, that didn’t make me feel any better either. Perhaps we should try the method Carlos Correa used in the clubhouse postgame. Which was brutal honesty. Correa said, “Our failures are because we’re playing shitty baseball.”

It’s hard to disagree.

The main culprit here was the pitching. Was it bad? Yes. The team’s ERA was 8.00 over the 10 games of the road trip. That’s right, they Astros gave up 8 earned runs per game.

The starting pitching was bad. Astros starters have an ERA of 8.15 over the 10 games of the road trip. Just as bad, they pitched only 35.1 inning. Since it’s a 10-game trip, it’s not hard to do the math. Astros starters averaged only 3.5 innings per start. In modern baseball, it is not essential to get 6 plus every night from your starters. It is, on the other hand, it is important to get out of the 4th inning.

Though really, it’s more important not to essentially give up a run for every inning you are on the mound.

Astros relievers were better than the starters…barely. They had an ERA of 7.91 in the 46.2 innings they covered over the course of the 10 games on the road trip. It got no better or worse when the Astros turned to the bullpen. Both the starters and reliever contributed equally to the dismal road trip.

The biggest cause of the high ERA was a high walk rate. On the road trip, Astros relievers walked 15.1% of all batters they faced. Walk rates are up across major league baseball so far this season, but the major league walk rate is 10.0%. Astros hurlers surpassed that easily. If fact, entering today, Astros pitchers have issued the high walk rate in the majors.

A poor stretch of play is frustrating, no matter how long it is. An eight-game losing streak is especially annoying. All teams have bad stretches, even if few of them feature pitching as poor as the Astros have had. The losses this early in the season do little to affect the team’s overall trajectory on the season.

But the thing that will affect the Astros overall trajectory for the 2026 season are the injuries the team suffered on this road trip.

I covered Hunter Brown’s injury at the end of last week. As I noted, there is no more worrisome injury to the Astros because Brown is supposed to anchor the team’s pitching staff this season. Even under the best circumstances, no other Astros starter can come close to Brown’s potential on the mound. The Astros are already suffering greatly from missing their ace.

But the injuries to the starting rotation are not limited to Brown. Today, the Astros placed Tatsuya Imai on the IL with a tired arm. Cristian Javier went on the IL on this road trip with a shoulder strain. If you’re counting, that’s three-fifths of the opening day starting rotation on the shelf—and it is only April 14.

The lineup made their own contribution to the injured list. Jake Meyers went on the 10-day IL on Saturday with a back problem. Pena joined him today with a hamstring injury. Initial reports indicate these injuries are relatively mild, but they certainly come at a terrible time, when the bats are trying (if unsuccessful) to carry the arms. But the biggest effect of the injuries to Meyers and Pena are defensive. Those two are the Astros best defenders in the everyday lineup. The outfield, in particular, will suffer defensively from the move from Meyers to Joey Loperfido as the everyday centerfielder.

Injuries to key players always hurt a team because they have to turn things over to guys they would rather be on the bench or in the minors. In the Astros case, the combination of injuries is particularly harmful. It greatly challenges the team’s depth, which is thin to begin with.

The silver linings here are small. It’s early and the team has time to overcome the losing streak. The team was in worse shape in 2024, yet came back to win the division. A team game stretch feels like forever when you’re losing 9 of 10, but in the context of the whole season, it’s not much. It is the equivalent of one game in an NFL season.

But between the pitching and injuries, the West Coast road trip was a complete and total disaster for the Astros.

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It is only 11 games into the season, but already that strategy is being tested. It is being tested in three ways.

Hunter Brown

The first is with the injury to Hunter Brown’s shoulder. Brown “felt discomfort during a throwing session” on Friday in West Sacramento. He returned to Houston over the weekend and was diagnosed with a Grade 2 muscle strain, which involves a partial muscle tear.

Brown will be shut down for 2 weeks before he is evaluated. But even if Brown’s shoulder heals in those 2 weeks, he will still need time to ramp back up to a starter’s workload. And that’s the best case scenario. He’s likely out for more than a month.

The good news is that the news could be worse.

The bad news is everything else. Brown is out for a while and he is the one indispensable starter in the 2026 rotation. Brown is not only supposed to be the team’s ace, and earn Cy Young votes like he did in 2025. But Brown is also supposed to be the team’s workhorse.

Brown had never been on the IL before, and that allowed him to make 29, 30, and 31 starts in 2023, 2024, and 2025, respectively. The Astros were counting on Brown to remain healthy and one the bump every 5th day.

There is no more impactful injury for the 2026 Astros and our only hope is that he will return before things get out of hand.

Cristian Javier

Which they may have already. Yesterday in Denver, Cristian Javier left the game after he threw warm up pitches before the second inning with a shoulder injury. Javier made happy noises about his injury after today’s game, but players are trained to downplay their injuries as a measure of their toughness. It seems unlikely that he will be able to avoid the injury list, and quite likely for more than 15 days.

Javier has struggled out of the gate, walking 9 in 9.1 innings in his first 3 starts. It is quite possible that his injury is one of the causes of his slow start. Getting healthy could allow Javier to reset and come back with better control. But that’s the optimistic scenario. The realistic one is that Javier’s busted UCL and subsequent Tommy John surgery have sapped some of his skills and he’s a more limited pitcher now than he was at his peak in 2022.

The Bullpen

Javier’s injury required Astro relievers to throw 7 innings in today’s game. It did not go well. Really not well. Astro relievers gave up 8 runs, 7 hits, and 9 walks (yikes) to Rocky hitters.

That performance was not an outlier. Over the first 11 games of the season, the Astros bullpen has an ERA of 7.09. Is that bad? you might ask. And yes, yes it is. It is the highest in the majors.

One issue is walks; Astros relievers have walked 14.3% of the batters they have faced, the 4th most of any major league bullpen. A bigger issue is home runs. Astros relievers have given up 2.53 home runs per nine inning, the worst rate in baseball.

The one silver lining is that there is some evidence that Astros relievers are suffering from some back luck. Their expected ERA and expected FIP, which normalize their home rate rates to historical averages, are at 4.36 and 4.40 respectively. That can’t bring any of those home run balls hit in the season’s first 11 days back, but it does indicate the bullpen should post better numbers over the course of the long season.

The bad news is that those numbers do not normalize the walks. Astros relievers will have to do that through improved play. Pitching coach Josh Miller is just beginning the season and he already has his work cut out for him.

The Astros will now have to piece together a rotation now with two members of the Opening Day rotation down. Their plan has been to use a 6-man rotation over the stretch of 13 straight games they begin on Friday night in Seattle.

That six-man rotation plan has been in the works for a while and includes adding Spencer Arrighetti to the rotation. The team sent Arrighetti to begin the season in Sugar Land to maintain a starter’s workload. I expect Arrighetti to start on either Sunday or Monday’s game in Seattle.

But the Astros now have two openings in their rotation, so they will need to find another starting pitcher to make starts. The wide search to pitching this offseason has produced a number of options. Weiss, signed out of Korea, is an option. Kai-Wei Teng, acquired in a trade from the Giants, is a less likely option. In addition, Colton Gordon, Jason Alexander, and JP France are all in the rotation at Sugar Land and have pitched in Daiken Park before.

None are ideal options, but each can cover some innings. But the issue is obvious. None are Hunter Brown or anything close to his ability.

I’ll end where I started. The front office acquired a lot of pitching depth this offseason. That depth is already being tested. Let’s hope it comes through.

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The games count the same as they will in August, but the context is completely different.

The Astros are winning because of a hot streak from the offense has been fun to watch, especially as the team won high scoring games over the weekend against the Angels and blew out the Red Sox on Monday and Tuesday nights at Daiken Park.

But is this just a hot week or a sign of an improved offense? It’s too soon to tell.

But there is one place where I have focused that we can analyze with great detail—how Joe Espada has chosen to deploy his bullpen, especially in the 7th inning.

By the middle of last season, Joe Espada had established a clear hierarchy in his bullpen—closer Josh Hader had the 9th; Bryan Abreu had the 8th, and Bryan King had emerged from an effective bullpen to have the 7th inning. When the game was close, Espada’s bullpen plan was clear most nights.1

This plan was interrupted last season by Josh Hader’s injury, which pushed Abreu to closer and left more difficult—and less reliable—choices for Espada to consider in setting up his closer. With Josh Hader beginning the 2026 season on the IL with a biceps injury, the more difficult bullpen choices Espada faced at the end of last season continued into this year.

In particular, I have focused on how Espada has handled the 7th inning. In moving his most reliable relievers back an inning, Espada protected the end of the game, but that move has created dilemmas for him in how to deal with the 7th inning.

How has he dealt with the 7th inning so far?

• Game 1. In a tie game, AJ Blubaugh pitched the 7th inning as the last of the 2.1 innings he threw to bridge between starter Hunter Brown and King and Abreu at the back end.

• Game 2. The Astros were losing 5-2 at this point. Espada started the inning with Roddery Munoz carrying over from the 6th inning. After walking 2 batters with 1 out, Steven Okert relieved him, retired the last 2 batters, and then retired the side in order in the 8th.

• Game 3. Kai-Wei Teng pitched the 7th as the last of his 2.1 innings. Notably, Teng still came out after a long bottom of the 6th in which the Astros scored 8 runs and sent 11 men to the plate.

• Game 4. In a tie ballgame, Blubaugh retired the Angels in order in the 7th, and again in the 8th. He was credited with the win as the Astros scored 3 in the bottom of the 8th to take the lead.

• Game 5. Lance McCullers finished the inning. I thought McCullers would be done after 6 excellent innings, but Espada wanted to press his starter. McCullers clearly tired but struck out Masataka Yoshida to end a Red Sox threat.

• Game 6. Cody Bolton, just up from Sugar Land that day, struck out 3 in the 7th and went on to finish off the game, giving up just 1 run.

• Game 7. Espada flipped the script, letting the lefty King face a pair of left handed hitters and the top 3 hitters in the Red Sox order. It worked in the 7th as King struck out 2 and retired the side in order. It looked less good in the 8th when Teng allowed a home run to Wilyer Abreu.

A couple of themes stand out to me here.

1. There is no set plan for Espada and pitching coach Josh Miller in the 7th inning. The only pitcher to throw twice in the 7th in the season’s first week is Blubaugh. Espada is still sorting out what he wants to do in the 7th.

2. Espada is also willing to let pitchers go long into the 7th. Blubaugh and Teng both got the 7th on separate occasions as a 3rd up-down. Espada pressed McCullers through the 7th in his one start this season.

3. Espada has more options this season to get multiple innings from relievers and he is taking advantage of that. Espada has had a reliever get more than 3 outs in 6 of the team’s 7 games. In fact, the only game where he went to a more traditional one inning per reliever strategy was in Game 7 when he had a well-rested back end of his bullpen thanks to multi-inning stints from Bolton in Game 6 and from Ryan Weiss in Game 5, when he covered the final 2 innings after McCullers departed.

In short, Joe Espada is still trying to sort through his options for how to deal with the 7th inning. In 2025, he had a clear plan thanks to having high quality relief options in the 8th and 9th innings. With those options limited in 2026 due to injuries, Espada has already tried several options in the 7th.

I expect the experimenting with the 7th inning to continue on the road trip to Sacramento, Phoenix, and Denver.

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The implicit message that Crane has sent to his two most prominent baseball men: Playoffs or Else.

The “or else” message seems to be an offshoot of Crane’s boast that “while I’m here, the window will never close.” Crane’s attitude is almost royal. Not from the current days of impotent monarchs providing only tabloid fodder while elected officials run the actual government. No, it sounds like more like a consequential monarch claiming to speak for his whole nation. It sounds like Kaiser Wilhelm who said in 1911 “As long as I am here, there will be no war unless I will it.”

Jim Crane wills a playoff appearance. Much like Kaiser Wilhelm in the lead up to World War I, Crane’s choice matter toward reaching the playoffs this season. But just like the Kaiser, there are forces that influence the outcome well beyond Crane’s control.

The 2026 Houston Astros finished 87-75, missing the playoffs for the first time since 2016.

The team was beset by injuries. Three members of the Opening Day starting rotation had significant injuries—two were season ending. Only 3 hitters played in more than 140 games, as injuries kept regulars such as Jeremy Pena, Isaac Paredes, Jake Meyers, and Yordan Alvarez out of the lineup for significant periods of time. With more injury luck, the Astros would have relied more on their best players, less on the Colton Gordons and Taylor Trammells of the world and, as a result, win at least one more game. Heck, since they lost out on the playoffs on a tiebreaker, just a bit more random luck would have done the trick.

Of course, every Astros fan wants to will pitchers’ UCLs to stay intact, for oblique muscles to remain untweaked, and bones to never be broken. But these are matters of fortune, not will. The Astros did change their athletic training staff in the hope that it reduces injuries in 2026. I hope that bit of will works, but I bet it is a matter of luck.

Yet, the 2025 Astros failed to make the playoffs because the talent was not good enough. The team has not developed a high quality regular from its farm system in recent years. That places upward pressure on the payroll. Those in their first couple of years of major league service make near the league minimum and thus are some of the best bargains in baseball. Without such young players—a staple of the team from 2015 through 2023—the team must pay more for players in the salary arbitration process or full retail price for those they sign as free agents.

This is the best argument that Brown’s job should be in jeopardy. The Astros rank 29th in most farm system rankings and have few prospects to become regulars for the team in 2026. Brown’s scouting prowess helped the Braves draft well, but it has not translated yet to the Astros.

Some have argued that Brown is hamstrung by his low draft position, and it is true that the Astros have not done well in the draft since they were drafting in the Top 5 during the tanking years. But teams can find good draft picks late in the first round.

For example, in 2023, Brown took Brice Mathews with the 28th pick in the draft—his first selection as Astros GM. Going one pick behind Mathews was Jonny Farmelo, who is advance to being a Top 100 prospect. Or the Astros could have taken Luke Keaschall, who will be Twins everyday second baseman this year. Or Thomas White, expected to join the Marlins rotation later this season.

The 2026 Astros lose Framber Valdez, one of the team’s best pitchers over the last 6 seasons. As I addressed yesterday, Valdez’s loss prompted the front office to find pitching solutions from a wide variety of sources to cover the innings thrown by Valdez—one of baseball’s most reliable workhorses.

That search turned up a large number of pitchers—Tatsuya Imai, Mike Burrows, Ryan Weiss, Nate Pearson, Kai-Wei Teng. But would you rather have all 5 of them for the 2026 season. Or would you rather have Framber Valdez. I’d take the proven Valdez.1

That gets to the other part of Jim Crane’s will. Jim Crane determines the Astros payroll. Crane was “wary of crossing the luxury tax threshold this winter,” according to multiple team sources who talked to Chandler Rome of The Athletic.

That choice is why the team let Valdez walk this offseason, traded utilityman Mauricio Dubon to the Braves for Nick Allen, and dealt Jesus Sanchez for a worse player in Joey Loperfido. Both moves can be overcome, but they add to the hill that the Astros have to climb.

This offseason, Crane said that while he “not necessarily afraid of the [luxury tax], I run the team like a business and there’s only so much resources you can put into it without going deep in the hole.”

Crane’s will is to make a profit. And you know what, he should. That’s an understandable priority for a businessman like Crane. But prioritizing profits over players, and thus profits over playoffs, is clearly a choice. And it’s Crane’s choice.

Overall, Jim Crane has run the highest payrolls of any Astros owner in history.2 He limited the payroll significantly during the rebuild, but has ramped it up in the 2020s and he has tried to will his team to a second and then a third World Series title. In the big picture, Crane has run payrolls high enough for the team to be competitive. But he has also chosen this season to limit his team on the field based on his desire to maximize his profits.

Jim Crane’s arrogance is the reality that Dana Brown and Joe Espada have to deal with. It’s their job to get the team to the playoffs this season—payroll limits, injuries, lost free agents, and the lack of a tiebreaker game be damned. Brown and Espada know that Crane in the 2020s is not known for his patience or understanding.

He let Brown’s successor go after the 2022 season; that is, right after they won the World Series. No Astros owner has ever installed a long-term manager to define the team for a decade. Both Brown and Espada have a clear mission this year from Jim Crane—get to the playoffs or you are out.

That attitude from Crane will shape the choices that Brown and Espada make this season. Going for it this offseason was a reasonable choice because the Astros do not have many assets that would allow them to get future focused assets. The front office was better off prioritizing 2026 over 2027 or any other year in the future.

But the pressure to save their jobs will push Brown and Espada to make decisions throughout the year in an effort to make the playoffs, even if the odds to do that get short.

Most projections systems had the Astros just outside the playoffs entering the season, usually as the 7th best team in the American League, with playoff odds or around 35-45% depending on your projection system. A playoff berth is certainly possible.

A successful 2026 season for the Astros involves good health from Yordan Alvarez making him an MVP candidate, a bounce back from Yainer Diaz, improvement from Cam Smith, and a rotation that meets the hopes the front office had this offseason when the acquired Imai and Burrows. That would combine with gentle levels of regression from players who had breakout seasons in 2025 such as Jeremy Pena and Jake Meyers.

Those are not unreasonable hopes for an Astros fans. But they are tempered with the reality that they require more to go right than to go wrong. And that the upside of this team is capped probably at a low-to-mid 90s win total.

The obvious concern is that this is an old team, with thirty-something scheduled to start at three infield position and most players on the roster with an unenviable injury track record. The season begins with 2 of the top 5 options in the bullpen on the injured list and the concern that Josh Hader and Bennett Sousa will be joined by others before they return to the active roster. The upside may be capped but the downside doesn’t seem to be.

Dana Brown and Joe Espada must deal with the pressure Jim Crane is choosing to place on them in the face of an aging roster. They’ll need a great deal of skill to navigate this team to the playoffs. And of course, they could use a great deal of luck in doing so.

The typical analysis of the 2026 Astros season is that it is pivotal. The Astros have kept their competitive window open for over a decade at this point and treated the 2026 offseason based on the idea that they will compete for a playoff spot again. But the potential of a bad season with an aging roster may compel the team into a rebuild sooner than they like. A good season extends the competitive window, especially if young players like Smith and Spencer Arrighetti develop into everyday contributors.

The team could go either way this year.

Yet, Jim Crane’s will may mean none of that matters. It’s win for go home for Dana Brown and Joe Espada. Which means the next set of field and general managers will have the same task in the future, regardless of what this season brings. As long as Jim Crane is here, the Astros will go to the playoffs if he wills it.

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At one level, the choice to pursue pitching this offseason looks odd based on how the Astros performed collectively in 2025. The Astros were 9^th in the majors last season in runs allowed, giving up 665 runs—9^th fewest in the majors. The offense was what kept the Astros out of the playoffs in 2025, scoring only 686 runs—10^th fewest in the majors.

Yet, the choice to focus on pitching this offseason was made less with an eye to the previous season but towards the next one. And that would one without Framber Valdez in the rotation.

Jim Crane did not want to pay the luxury tax for a third straight season and set the budget to achieve his goal. That, combined with Crane’s reluctance to sign high dollar free agent contracts, meant that the Astros were not going to re-sign Framber Valdez. Instead, Valdez signed with Detroit on a deal that pays him $33 million a season for two guaranteed years.

Valdez was the rotation anchor since 2020, staying off the disabled list and providing an ace level performance most seasons. Valdez’s ERA slipped in 2025 to 3.66, but not his ability to take the ball every 5^th day. Valdez threw 192 innings over 31 starts in 2025.

Dana Brown needed to make up for those innings this offseason but also to do so under Crane’s payroll limit. He could not sign Valdez or another high price free agent pitcher and stay under budget. Instead, Brown tried a lot of different things, acquiring pitchers from almost every other type of method available to him.

Medium Ticket Free Agent Signing

In the offseason preview, I talked about the exact themes discussed in the previous paragraph. The Astros would want to sign a starting pitcher to replace Valdez, but one in the “next tier of free agents.” The names I suggested were Michael King, Zac Gallen, Merrill Kelly, and Chris Bassitt. Welp, I did not get that part right.

But I did say they would sign “whichever free agent’s price falls,” and that part I got exactly right. And that free agent pitcher is Tatsuya Imai, signed from Japan. Imai’s price fell into the price range for the Astros, signing for $18M a year guaranteed and an opt-out after the 2026 season.

Imai is the first free agent the Astros have signed from Japan. More notably, Imai is the first free agent signed in Jim Crane’s ownership who has an opt-out. Jim Crane’s Astros have almost always signed players to very straight-forward contracts. Imai is the first time they have joined other front offices in offering a more creative contract structure. Imai’s contract is under value in 2026—he should be worth more than $18M a season. But the opt-out allows Imai to re-enter the market next season if he has a good 2026. And he has two other guaranteed years in the contract to protect him if he gets injured.

The need for pitching drove this innovation.

Trade Acquisition

Hunter Brown will take the ball on Opening Day, as expected. But Mike Burrows, acquired from the Pirates this offseason, will take the bump for the second game of the season, certainly an unexpected development.

The Astros traded Jacob Melton and Anderson Brito, two of their top prospects in a thin farm system, to acquire Burrows.

I also wrote this offseason that the front office was likely to go for it. This is definitely a trade in that vein. Burrows helps the rotation today, while Melton might be a fourth outfielder and Brito is a future asset. Burrows has five seasons before he becomes a free agent, so he is definitely not a rental. But this deal represents a prioritization of 2026 over 2027 or any other year in the future.

Imai and Burrows will start the season in the rotation, joining the ace (Hunter Brown), the guy trying to make a comeback (Cristian Javier), and the old guy holding out for one more score (Lance McCullers, Jr) and the new guy trying to prove himself (Spencer Arrighetti). It’s not clear to me if that is a starting rotation or a reboot of the A-Team.

But the search for pitching meant the front office sought out even more different types of new acquisitions in an effort to cover the innings they got last season from Valdez.

Reclamation Project

Nate Pearson was a consensus Top 20 prospect in baseball at one point, but both the Blue Jays and Cubs have let him go for essentially nothing. The Astros will take Pearson through their pitching lab in an effort to find the right combination of pitches and adjustments to turn him into a bonafide major league pitcher. That pitching lab is a big reason why the Astros beat out several other suitors for Pearson

Pearson was given a shot at the rotation but will almost certainly spend the season in the bullpen. The Astros have had success with this type of pitcher in recent years and the hope is they can do it again.

Overseas Reclamation Project

Ryan Weiss washed out of the American leagues and ended up pitching the last two seasons in Korea. After a mediocre 2024 for the Hanwha Eagles, Weiss improved in 2025, posting a 2.87 ERA and 207 strikeouts in 178 innings pitched.

Are those improvements good enough to get out big league hitters? The Astros gave him a very small free agent contract to find out. Weiss will start the season in the bullpen but will be in the mix to be a starting pitcher at some point this season.

Scrap Heap Find

Kai-Wei Teng came to the Astros in a small trade after he was designated for assignment by the Giants when they signed Harrison Bader. Teng will serve as a long man out of the Astros bullpen, asked to cover multiple innings. That’s a more important role with Valdez, their most consistent innings eater, in Detroit.

In good news, Teng can strike out hitters—he had a 28% strikeout rate in 2025. But he also walks them—12% of the major league hitters he faced last season. If he can get pitch with more control, he could be an effective pitcher. But this is a big challenge—and why the Giants let him go for very little.

Hope Something Sticks

I have identified a wide variety of ways that the Astros front office acquired pitchers this offseason. But there is a simpler name for it: throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks. The Astros have lost a lot of volume in the rotation with the loss of Valdez. And they are trying to replace it with volume—lots of options. They have put many of their resources into a variety of pitching options. None are individually guaranteed to work out. But if you try that across enough options, at least one should. Possibly more.

This is an approach the Dana Brown front office has tried with the bullpen over the last several years. They have sorted through a number of potential scrap heap options, releasing a number of them, but finding useful bullpen options such as Bennett Sousa and Enyel de los Santos after they were DFAed by other teams and Steven Okert via a minor league signing. The front office is taking a similar kitchen sink approach to the rotation this season.

Josh Miller as Linchpin

At the center of this strategy is pitching coach Josh Miller. I declared Miller the team’s MVP in the 2024 season and frankly, he could have won it again in 2025. The Astros suffered major injuries in 2025 to three members of the Opening Day rotation (Arrighetti, Ronel Blanco, and Hayden Wesneski) and had to wait for two other starting pitchers to return from major injuries (Javier and McCullers) and one never to return (Luis Garcia). Yet Miller coaxed his charges to being a top-third run prevention unit, helping scrap heap options like Jason Alexander and Brandon Walter to effective seasons. Miller was instrumental in turning those scrap heap options in the bullpen into reliable relievers and taking Bryan King from a guy selected in the minor league version of the Rule 5 draft into an effective setup man.

Miller heads an effective pitching development system in the Astros organization. It is his vision that guides the pitching lab at West Palm Beach, the Deiken Park bullpen, and in Sugar Land and Corpus Christi.

Miller has been so valuable as the Astros pitching coach that Dana Brown’s offseason strategy this year was to give Miller lots of options and hope he can be just as effective this season as he was in the past. There is a ton of pressure on Miller his year. He’s been up to it in the past. Let’s hope he is again.

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The traffic never spread beyond the inning. It topped out at four batters faced before the frame closed and that is the risk profile for power relievers.

Abreu works by attacking the zone with velocity and finishing hitters once the count turns in his favor. When the fastball stays elevated or the breaking ball backs up into the middle of the plate, hitters can punish it quickly.

Spring training can exaggerate those moments. Relievers are often working on location or sequencing rather than finishing every plate appearance with their best pitch.

Abreu’s role entering the season places him in the closerr role, and outings like this are mostly about rhythm, this include clean entries, repeatable mechanics, and consistent pitch shapes.

Demon magic prayer circle for Josh Hader!


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Bush’s 2026 Grapefruit League appearance was brief but revealing. In three games (nine plate appearances), he went 1-for-7 with two walks, producing a .143/.333/.143 line. The sample is too small to carry analytical weight, but the shape of the plate appearances matched the approach that has defined his minor-league profile.

Both walks came after deep counts, consistent with the plate discipline he showed throughout the system. The strikeouts reflected the adjustment most upper-minors hitters face when they first see consistent major-league velocity.

Bush did not enter professional baseball with much draft pedigree. He was selected in the 16th round of the 2023 draft out of Tyler Junior College, a path that usually produces organizational depth rather than future regulars. At the time, he looked like a developmental project: a 6-foot-4, 235-pound catcher/first baseman with a left-handed swing and raw power.

The first real sign of progress came in 2025 between High-A Asheville and Double-A Corpus Christi. Across 327 at-bats, Bush hit 15 home runs with a .361 on-base percentage and a .777 OPS, production that translated to roughly a 121 wRC+ and earned him a late promotion to Double-A.

Bush does not project as a high-average hitter. His value comes from power and plate discipline. Throughout his climb through the system, his on-base percentage has consistently outpaced his batting average, the statistical footprint of hitters who work counts and accept walks rather than forcing contact.

The batted-ball shape supports the power projection. Much of his extra-base damage in 2025 came on pulled fly balls, the contact type most strongly associated with home-run output. Hitters who combine pull-side lift with above-average walk rates often develop power faster than early totals suggest, and Bush’s swing path already produces that type of contact.|

Bush’s swing is built for loft: a leveraged left-handed path that naturally lifts the ball to the pull side, allowing his raw strength to translate into power even when the contact is not perfectly squared.

Defensively, Bush has moved between catcher and first base. The arm strength remains playable behind the plate, though some evaluators expect first base to become the long-term position if the bat continues to develop. If he remains playable behind the plate even part-time, the offensive bar is lower.

That context is why the spring training plate appearances mattered, even in such a small sample. The walks suggested the strike-zone judgment still holds when the velocity improves. The swing-and-miss showed the adjustment that still needs to happen.

Bush is unlikely to reach the majors this season, but the development path is clearer than it was a year ago. If the plate discipline holds and the pull-side power continues to translate against upper-level pitching, the outcome starts to look familiar: a late-round hitter who develops into a legitimate depth option.

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In his spring outing against Washington, Burrows worked a short appearance, striking out two hitters and finishing the inning before it had time to stretch. The box score itself will not matter in September. The structure of the outs might.

Burrows is not supposed to be the Cy Young candidate in this rotation. Hunter Brown carries that expectation. Brown’s strikeout profile and velocity place him at the front of the staff. Burrows enters the season in a quieter role. His job is to stabilize the middle of the rotation and keep innings moving.

But the shape of his arsenal leaves room for something larger if everything holds.

One of the clearer moments came in the second inning against CJ Abrams. Abrams pushed the plate appearance to two strikes before Burrows finished him with a changeup that Abrams swung through. The strikeout itself was not unusual. The setup was the point.

Burrows had already established the fastball earlier in the sequence. That forced Abrams to respect the upper part of the zone. Once hitters must protect that fastball plane, the changeup becomes the pitch that distorts timing.

Fastball to claim the count. Changeup to finish the at-bat. That is the structure Burrows works from.

The four-seam fastball has always been the variable in his profile. When the command holds, hitters must commit earlier than they prefer. That early commitment opens space for the changeup. Instead of chasing strikeouts late in counts, Burrows can finish hitters once they fall behind.

If the fastball command drifts, the sequence compresses. Hitters can eliminate the top of the zone and wait for the changeup to fall into predictable lanes. That is why Burrows’ development has always centered on fastball execution rather than velocity.

The changeup remains the best pitch in the arsenal. Against left-handed hitters it functions as the primary finishing pitch. The pitch begins on the same plane as the fastball before fading beneath the barrel. When it arrives ahead in the count, hitters often swing defensively.

That pitch gives Burrows something every modern front-line starter needs. He has a pitch that can generate empty swings even when hitters suspect it might appear.

For Burrows to move from mid-rotation starter to Cy Young candidate, the profile needs one more ingredient. He needs easier outs.

That is where the sinker becomes important.

Burrows has leaned heavily on the four-seam and changeup pairing. That combination can produce strikeouts, but it can also stretch innings when hitters begin sitting on the fastball.

A heavier sinker presence against right-handed hitters changes the equation. Instead of chasing swing-and-miss results in every at-bat, Burrows can generate early contact and shorten innings. The difference between six innings and seven often lives in that adjustment.

Recent Cy Young contenders offer two models for how this transition works.

Kevin Gausman built his profile around a fastball and splitter combination that forced hitters into defensive swings. Logan Webb built his around a sinker that generates ground balls while still allowing strikeouts.

Burrows sits somewhere between those models. The changeup already gives him the finishing pitch. The sinker offers a path toward the type of contact management that keeps pitch counts stable across long outings.

The current rotation structure explains why that development matters.

Hunter Brown anchors the front. Tatsuya Imai projects as the stabilizing middle starter. Burrows fits behind them as the pitcher who can turn clean innings into length. When that chain works, the bullpen stops carrying the pitching staff.

That is the real value of a pitcher like Burrows.

He does not need overwhelming velocity to become elite. He needs repetition. Fastball to claim the count. Changeup to finish the at-bat. Enough weak contact to keep innings from expanding.

Cy Young seasons rarely begin with dominance. They begin with innings that stay under control.

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Imai worked two scoreless innings, allowing one hit and one walk while striking out three. He faced eight batters and threw 30 pitches, 19 for strikes.

The outing stayed compact. No runner advanced past second base, and the pitch count never forced him into defensive pitching.

The first inning showed how the rhythm of the appearance would unfold. Xavier Edwards lifted a fly ball to right field early in the count, putting the ball in play before the at-bat could stretch. Connor Morel followed with a shallow single, the only hit Imai allowed. He answered by striking out Griffin Conine swinging, ending the brief traffic before it developed into a longer inning.

The second inning followed the same pattern. Imai recorded another strikeout, issued the lone walk of the outing, and kept the inning contained without needing to expand the zone or accelerate the tempo. Even when Miami put a runner in scoring position, the sequence stayed controlled.

That kind of containment is often the first indicator teams look for when evaluating pitchers transitioning from NPB where the. belocity tends to translate. The question is whether the pitch shapes still disrupt timing when major-league hitters see them.

Imai’s fastball helps explain why hitters don’t always square it up.

Dan Sanchez of Orioles Review described it succinctly:

“Tatsuya Imai is so weird and I’m obsessed. Mid-90s fastball that on the surface has a horrible movement profile but because of his super flat approach angle it plays up, bizarro reverse slider à la Trey Yesavage.”

The flatter approach angle allows the fastball to stay on a plane hitters struggle to lift cleanly, even though the raw movement numbers look ordinary. That shape changes how hitters perceive the pitch as it approaches the zone, which can create weak contact even when the pitch doesn’t overwhelm them.

Houston isn’t asking Imai to dominate the way Hunter Brown does. Brown sits at the front of the rotation and carries the strikeout volume. Imai’s role is simpler: keep the innings behind Brown from collapsing.

That’s where the rest of the rotation begins to take shape. Brown anchors the top. Imai stabilizes the middle. Pitchers like Mike Burrows fit behind them as the variable layer , starters who can absorb innings if the pitch mix holds.

Last season the rotation rarely absorbed games cleanly, which forced the bullpen into leverage earlier than planned. The goal this year is structural: prevent that cycle from repeating.

Spring outings like this one don’t answer how a pitcher will look the third time through a lineup.

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He faced ten batters and threw 34 pitches, 18 for strikes. Two singles, no walks, no strikeouts. Four ground balls and five fly balls.

Blubaugh entered in the third inning after Colton Gordon. Colton Cowser singled to begin the frame but was caught stealing moments later, removing the only early pressure. A groundout followed to end the inning.

The fourth moved quickly. Adley Rutschman lifted a fly ball to center. Ryan Mountcastle singled but never advanced. Another groundout closed the inning.

The fifth began with three consecutive fly-ball outs. Cowser singled again before a foul out ended the appearance.

Ten batters. Thirty-four pitches. No walks. No runner advanced past second base.

That’s the kind of outing teams actually evaluate this time of year.

Blubaugh didn’t overpower hitters, but he never lost the strike zone and never allowed innings to stretch. The contact stayed manageable and the pitch count remained controlled.

For a pitcher competing for depth innings, that matters more than the strikeout column in early March.

With Josh Hader unavailable, Houston’s bullpen structure shifts. Bryan Abreu would likely move into the closer role, leaving the eighth inning unsettled. The timing also matters as names like Bennett Sousa are considered. Bryan King has shown swing-and-miss ability but has also allowed hard contact at times, which leaves the bridge innings less defined.

That’s where pitchers like Blubaugh become relevant.

He isn’t a typical high-leverage arm, but outings like this, quick innings, no walks, limited advancement on the bases, are exactly what managers use to stabilize the middle of a bullpen when roles shift.

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After last season’s steady erosion of starter length, the emphasis is obvious. Two-plus innings, out. Protect the arm. Protect the bullpen from absorbing March’s workload in April.

At the plate, there was traffic but not pressure.

Six hits. Four walks. Six strikeouts. Six left on base.

Cam Smith went 2-for-3 with a double and later scored in a sequence that required a hit-by-pitch and a wild pitch to complete. It counted. It didn’t force anything. Loperfido tied the game with a single. Altuve opened with a base hit.

Alvarez worked a full count in his first trip, fouled off a fastball, then chased a 3–2 slider below the zone.

That decision matters more than the result.

When he stays within the strike zone, pitchers eventually have to challenge him and the lineup lengthens. When he expands, they don’t. One March at-bat won’t linger. The approach does.

Baserunners reached in five different innings. There wasn’t a stretch where Washington lost the strike zone or needed to reset the inning. No stacked extra-base contact. No forced mound visit.

Bryan Abreu threw one inning with a walk and no damage. No reliever was extended.

This looked less like a team chasing upside and more like one reestablishing structure.

Three runs works in March. Seattle won’t be that generous.

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