Astros ace Hunter Brown to 15-day IL with shoulder strain

If Hunter is full health by June 1st... I'm taking that RIGHT NOW.

 

The Stros were pretty healthy last year?

 

If this wasn't a league-wide issue you might have a point.

 

Last year was 2025. He is referring to 2024.

 

This just happened to get worse after Espada took over?

Hunter throwing over 100 pitches in his 2nd start?

Criminal use of Hader, Blanco etc .. last year, SMH

Let's see if Dana can rebuild the bullpen in season like Click did. If he can this season will be successful, if he can't SMH. It's not like this should come as a shock, Dana knew Hader wasn't going to be ready for the start of the season.

 

2024 and 2025 were fairly different experiences. Both under Espada though.

 

Has to be something serious if he was imaged on Friday and Espada declined to give an update yesterday.

 

There's nothing magical about 100 pitches. Other pitchers have thrown 90+ pitches in their first few starts.

What on earth was the criminal use of Blanco last year??

 

Agreed, if it was imaged on Friday.

 

It wasn’t. It was felt Friday in his session. They sent him home to houston afterwards. Probably imaged Sunday or Monday.

 

Think harder. . . Think back. . . Remember. . . Access this repressed memory.

McCullers, Garcia, and Urquidy were all injured missing the entire season.

Opening Day rotation: Framber, Javier, Brown, France, and Blanco

Javier lost for the season after 7 starts.
France lost for the season after 5 starts.

12 pitchers started games including: Shawn Dubin, Tayler Scott, Jake Bloss, and Blair Henley.

They had to trade prospects for Kikuchi just to make the postseason and have 3 viable playoff starters.

 

How about Espada's taking over coinciding with the pitch clock?

 

4 starting pitchers pitched 28+ games for that team. A 5th, Verlander, started 17 games after returning from his 2023 injury. That included all of their top pitchers. That is a really healthy pitching staff for modern day MLB. Given that Blanco, the #2 in the AL in ERA was relegated to the $4 SP / bullpen in the playoffs, Kikuchi was not required to have 3 viable playoff starters (though he was needed to make the playoffs).

Garcia, Urquidy, McCullers, and Verlander were all injured in 2023, so it seems weird to use the fact that we had all those injuries in 2023 as an example of how suddenly injuries went up in 2024 under Espada. It seems like it supports the opposite argument.

 

You said they were pretty healthy.

Having 3 projected SP injured before the season starts and miss the entire season is not healthy.

They also still lost 2 of their 5 starters from the opening day rotation for the season after 7 or fewer starts.

Sure, you replaced all 5 of those starters with other guys who mostly did stay healthy but you can't dismiss those 5.

 

Reading the context of a post is helpful. The context was a discussion about whether people started getting injured more under Espada. People being injured in 2023 under Dusty has no bearing on whether Espada's decisions were injuring players in 2024. Here is the post you selectively quoted for some reason - notice that I mentioned the managers and that 2023 was indeed a mess of injuries:

The 2017 Astros were throwing out Mike Fiers and 4 AAAA pitchers in the middle of the season for a while. I believe the 2023 Astros were a mess as well (Dusty) while the 2024 Astros were pretty healthy (Espada).

The 2024 Astros pitching was significantly healthier than both 2023 and 2025 suggesting maybe it's more randomness than manager-driven.

 

OK

How about.

Cristian Javier was in the opening day rotation and had TJS after only 7 starts.

J.P. France was in the opening day rotation and injured his shoulder after only 5 starts, missing the remainder of the season.

Jose Urquidy was healthy, throwing 9 innings in spring training but was not built up so sent on a rehab stint to Corpus Christi and Sugar Land where he pitched another 10.1 innings before injuring himself requiring TJS.

Framber injured himself, missing 26 days in April.

Verlander missed 20 games to start the season then injured himself again missing 60 games from early June until late August and never regained his 100% effectiveness.

McCullers was throwing much of early 2024 and even on a rehab stint in Sugar Land when he had a setback and was shutdown July 4th.

Luis Garcia actually made 2 rehab starts in the summer of 24 before having a setback and being shutdown for the rest of the season.

I don't know where re-injuries fit into your context.

Clearly the majority, if not all of these were outside if Espada's control but you still can't call them "healthy"

 

He was just on 790 and said he was giving an update at 4 PM (I think Mountain Time) on Hunter. I assume it’s going to be bad news - you typically don’t announce a time for an update when it is good news.

 

Tend to agree, but hopefully, he's just not wanting to play favorites by giving an exclusive to MT.... unfortunately, the alternative is far more likely

 

Man if it’s worse case scenario and Hunter is out, this is gonna be horrible for our outlook this year.

 

Insurmountable