{"id":549421,"date":"2026-02-01T19:44:17","date_gmt":"2026-02-01T19:44:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/549421\/"},"modified":"2026-02-01T19:44:17","modified_gmt":"2026-02-01T19:44:17","slug":"astros-reveal-rotation-plans-with-tatsuya-imai-hunter-brown-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/549421\/","title":{"rendered":"Astros reveal rotation plans with Tatsuya Imai, Hunter Brown"},"content":{"rendered":"

Astros reveal rotation plans with Tatsuya Imai, Hunter Brown <\/a> originally appeared on The Sporting News<\/a>. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Houston Astros<\/a> could enter the season with a six-man rotation, per The Athletic’s Chandler Rome and Andrew Baggarly.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

“The Astros plan to open the season with a six-man rotation, magnifying the need for relievers who can pitch multiple innings,” reported Rome and Baggarly<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Pitchers in Nippon Professional Baseball typically throw after five days of rest, so the Astros ‘ use of six starters is something that could help Tatsuya Imai acclimate to Major League Baseball.<\/p>\n

One downside of the move is that Hunter Brown, last year’s third-place finisher in AL Cy Young voting, would make fewer starts to open the year. Framber Valdez is still a free agent, but a return to Houston remains unlikely.<\/p>\n

Long relief options<\/p>\n

Nate Pearson, Enyel De Los Santos, and trade acquisition<\/a> Kai-Wei Teng are three options to throw long relief innings for the Astros.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

“Teng will be stretched out as a starter in spring training, but his most straightforward path to making the major league team may be as a long reliever,” wrote Rome and Baggarly.<\/p>\n

Teng had a 7.30 ERA in 12 appearances during the last two seasons with the San Francisco Giants<\/a>. The Astros designated J.P. France for assignment to make room on the 40-man roster for the Taiwanese right-hander.<\/p>\n

More MLB news:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Astros reveal rotation plans with Tatsuya Imai, Hunter Brown originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":549422,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2389],"tags":[36772,42,5,11192,79,139,54,3211,1328,11305,37588,4,878,2353,66,4658],"class_list":["post-549421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston-astros","tag-andrew-baggarly","tag-astros","tag-baseball","tag-enyel-de-los-santos","tag-framber-valdez","tag-houston","tag-houston-astros","tag-houstonastros","tag-hunter-brown","tag-j-p-france","tag-kai-wei-teng","tag-mlb","tag-nate-pearson","tag-nippon-professional-baseball","tag-san-francisco-giants","tag-tatsuya-imai"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115997092446029359","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=549421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549421\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/549422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=549421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=549421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=549421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}