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

He’s out for awhile. This team is toast. No closer. Loss your ace starter till at least June is my guess.

Hader out til whenever.
Brown out til whenever.

 

He’s done for at least 3 months.

insurmountable

 

RIP Astros season (March 26 - April 6, 2026)

 

At least it was only a week into the season and made it easier to face reality.

 

Is there an extension still on the table?

 

I think we can hang in there until June. If the bats stay relatively hot, we can piece some decent starts together and hang around .500 in our crappy division. Every win will be sweet until Blanco, Hader and Brown come back.

 

Ok maybe back in July….

 

And…..

 

I mean- best case (realistic) scenario is probalby all star break. Burrows and Imai and Lance pitching like legit 2's and Spaghetti being a quality major leaguer can probably keep us afloat until then- but it's certainly not great.

 

I hadn’t thought about this. You try to overcome that with what’s left of this staff..

 

Thank God "they're not worried about the injury". WTF?????

 

Either an ace (or 2) emerges or the Astros are cooked. The offensive production is way above what was expected and probably has some fluke in there somewhere. The bullpen is ass and now will get overextended even more because we lost our inning eating ace. Javier and McCullers are 4-5 inning guys, always taxing the pen.

I really can’t believe I’m saying it but maybe try King at closer for now.

I’m hoping Imai is lights out and can go deep in games. I also would like to see Burrows man up and pitch like an all star. Arrighetti has great stuff, maybe he can catch lightning in a bottle until HB returns, if he does return.

If these things don’t happen, something else good needs to happen.

 

We won't see him til August. The rotation is already shaky and we just lost the ace of the staff for the majority of the season, I hope they make a trade

 

Not ideal.

It's time to trade for Joe Ryan or Sandy Alcantara or sell and play for 2027.

Both will be very expensive

 

Could be true, but Hunter throwing over 100 pitches in his 2nd start is just plain stupid. IMHO

 

I agree

But to be accurate, he threw 78 pitches in his 2nd start.

The 102 was opening day - the only pitcher to throw 100+ in a season opener.

 

I`m not sure if throwing 102 pitches on opening day was the right move considering the new injury........that was just dumb IMHO

So, if Hunter is not back until June or July and no Hader for at least another month I dont have high hopes the offense can overcome the pitching.......man o man, sure miss me some Framber right about now

 

We miss Jeff Luhnow

 

Before was fired Luhnow would say in interviews that he thought injury prevention/treatment was going to be next market inefficiency and arena for potential competitive advantage. Would have been interesting to see what kinds of ideas his front office would have come up with.

 

And endless top picks in the farm from a teardown and no budget constraints.