{"id":668407,"date":"2026-04-07T13:35:18","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T13:35:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/668407\/"},"modified":"2026-04-07T13:35:18","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T13:35:18","slug":"astros-pitching-staff-is-in-serious-trouble-following-latest-injury-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/668407\/","title":{"rendered":"Astros pitching staff is in serious trouble following latest injury news"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Houston Astros can survive a lot of things \u2013 cold bats, bullpen hiccups, even a shaky back-end starter. What they can\u2019t survive is losing the one starter who was pitching like the season\u2019s stabilizer. That\u2019s what happened when the Astros placed Hunter Brown on the 15-day IL with a right shoulder strain, retroactive to Thursday. Brown was off to a ridiculous start \u2013 1-0, 0.84 ERA, 17 strikeouts in 10.1 innings. That\u2019s ace-level domination.<\/p>\n

MORE: Ranking the 15 teams with the best chance to win the NBA Finals<\/a><\/p>\n

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Losing More Than Just a Starter\"\"<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s not just about this year\u2019s two starts. Brown is coming off a 2025 season where he went 12\u20139, posted a 2.43 ERA, struck out 206, made his first All-Star team, and finished third in AL Cy Young voting. And now that guy is out with a shoulder strain\u2014the most annoying injury in baseball because it\u2019s either minor or it\u2019s a season-long nightmare.<\/p>\n

The sequence is also ugly. Brown felt discomfort during a Friday throwing session, got an MRI, and had to fly back to Houston for evaluation. It\u2019s his first major league IL stint, and the Astros are talking \u201ccautious optimism,\u201d and rightfully so.<\/p>\n

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A Brutal Stretch Ahead<\/p>\n

Houston has a brutal stretch coming up, and this is the stress in the calendar where depth gets exposed.<\/p>\n

The Astros were already coming off a 10-inning loss that taxed its relievers, and now they\u2019re staring at Coors Field with questions surrounding the rotation.<\/p>\n

MORE: MLB catcher power rankings in week 3<\/a><\/p>\n

Scrambling for Answers\"\"<\/p>\n

Houston recalled Christian Roa in the immediate roster move, but the bigger question is who actually takes Brown\u2019s starts.<\/p>\n

The Houston Chronicle floated Cody Bolton as a fill-in and mentioned other possible options in the pipeline. But this isn\u2019t the plan\u2014it\u2019s survival. This is the kind of injury that can sink a season early. Not because one guy alone is the whole staff, but because he was the one guy making everything else easier.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Enjoy free coverage of the top news & trending stories on The Big Lead\u00a0<\/a>\u2014<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Houston Astros can survive a lot of things \u2013 cold bats, bullpen hiccups, even a shaky back-end…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":668408,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2389],"tags":[42,5,45496,1269,139,54,3211,1328,10498,4,27502,1949,71],"class_list":{"0":"post-668407","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston-astros","8":"tag-astros","9":"tag-baseball","10":"tag-christian-roa","11":"tag-cody-bolton","12":"tag-houston","13":"tag-houston-astros","14":"tag-houstonastros","15":"tag-hunter-brown","16":"tag-mandatory-credit","17":"tag-mlb","18":"tag-shoulder-strain","19":"tag-the-athletics","20":"tag-washington-nationals"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116363692608630784","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668407","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=668407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668407\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/668408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=668407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=668407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=668407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}