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HOUSTON, TEXAS – MARCH 26: Hunter Brown #58 of the Houston Astros pitches in the second inning against the Los Angeles Angels on Opening Day at Daikin Park on March 26, 2026 in Houston, Texas. (Photo by Tim Warner\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n
The Houston Astros<\/a> have been dealt a tough blow early in the season as ace Hunter Brown has been placed on the injured list<\/a> with a grade two right shoulder strain. Brown had made two starts before the injury arose.<\/p>\n According to Chandler Rome of The Athletic<\/a>, Brown felt discomfort during a throwing session last week. Imaging revealed the grade two shoulder strain.<\/p>\n \u201cI would characterize that as positive \u2014 that it was strictly muscle and no issues with any of the bones or structures that you cringe to hear about,\u201d Astros general manager Dana Brown said. \u201cThe fact that it\u2019s muscular, it\u2019s a good thing.\u201d<\/p>\n There is no structural damage that is serious enough to require surgery, but Brown will be forced into rest for the next two weeks. He won\u2019t throw a ball in that time, at which point he will be re-evaluated.<\/p>\n There hasn\u2019t been a concrete timeline given by the organization outside of the rest Brown will have.<\/p>\n Brown was off to a great start<\/a>; in his first two outings, he went 10.2 innings, allowing just one run on five hits while striking out 17 batters.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Astros General Manager Disappointed With Injury<\/p>\n Astros general manager Dana Brown seemed disappointed in the way Brown ramped up into the season through spring training.<\/p>\n \u201cI would have liked to see a little slower buildup,\u201d Dana Brown said. \u201cHe was fired up. I would attribute it more to maybe throwing too hard too soon. That\u2019s always a concern. You don\u2019t want guys gunning it the first few weeks of them getting built up. He was literally 97-98 (mph) often in all of his games that he pitched. I\u2019d have liked to see him dial it back \u2014 maybe 95-96, touching, feeling a little bit. That\u2019s the only thing.\u201d<\/p>\n Brown threw 102 pitches on opening day, a heavy workload for any pitcher in their first outing of the season.<\/p>\n Astros manager Joe Espada was similarly disappointed with the injury.<\/p>\n \u201cThe fact that it\u2019s muscular and there\u2019s no damage to anything in there, it\u2019s good news,\u201d Espada said. \u201cBut the fact that we\u2019re going to miss him for a bit just sucks.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Astros Pitching Staff Struggling Early in Season<\/p>\n The loss of Brown hits harder after you look at the rest of Houston\u2019s starting rotation, which has not fared well so far this season.<\/p>\n Michael Burrows, Cristian Javier, and Tatsuya Imai have all limped out of the gate, with ERA\u2019s of 5.63, 12.96, and 4.32, respectively. Each has had at least one really bad start here in early April.<\/p>\n The most concerning has been Javier, who was expected to get back to a No. 3 caliber starter after injuries limited him the last two seasons. In both of his starts, he\u2019s allowed six earned runs and only struck out three. He hasn\u2019t made it past the fifth inning in either.<\/p>\n Lance McCullers has been the only other starter to show any signs of strength so far. He pitched seven innings of one-run ball in his first start of the season against the Boston Red Sox<\/a>, where he struck out nine batters.<\/p>\n \n\t\t\tMatt Skillings<\/a> Matt Skillings is a Boston based sports journalist and a graduate of UMass Amherst, where he majored in journalism and communication. Matt covered the UMass men’s ice hockey team for three years for the Massachusetts Daily Collegian. He was also a media intern for the Harwich Mariners of the Cape Cod Baseball League for two summers. Matt has additional bylines with the New England Hockey Journal, the Boston Globe and MassLive. More about Matt Skillings<\/a>\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\tMore Heavy on Astros\n\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\tLoading more stories\n\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Heavy HOUSTON, TEXAS – MARCH 26: Hunter Brown #58 of the Houston Astros pitches in the second inning…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":670667,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2389],"tags":[42,5,139,54,3211,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-670666","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-houston","11":"tag-houston-astros","12":"tag-houstonastros","13":"tag-mlb"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116370357346290830","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670666","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=670666"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670666\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/670667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=670666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=670666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=670666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}