HOUSTON \u2014 The right hamstring strain suffered by Houston Astros All-Star third baseman Isaac Paredes \u201cis a little bit more severe than we projected,\u201d general manager Dana Brown said on Sunday afternoon, accentuating the team\u2019s need for more offense at Thursday\u2019s trade deadline.<\/p>\n
Brown said Paredes is seeking a second opinion and the team should know more about his prognosis within the week. Paredes has not been spotted at Daikin Park since he suffered the injury on July 19 against the Seattle Mariners.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s tough to be optimistic when you know it\u2019s more severe,\u201d Brown said on the team\u2019s pregame radio show.<\/p>\n
Paredes is one of a major-league-high nine Astros position players currently on the injured list. Five of them, including Paredes, were in Houston\u2019s Opening Day lineup.<\/p>\n
Paredes has perhaps the most serious injury of that quintet. Brown\u2019s comments on Sunday must prompt serious concern about whether Paredes will return this season \u2014 a reality that could alter the GM\u2019s approach leading into the trade deadline.<\/p>\n
Earlier this week, Brown said the team is \u201cprioritizing the bats\u201d while also remaining in the market for a starting pitcher. Acquiring both would be an ideal deadline, but Houston\u2019s lack of top-end prospect capital will make it difficult to win any bidding wars.<\/p>\n
Few available players would be able to offset Paredes\u2019 absence. The pull-happy third baseman leads the Astros\u2019 lineup with 19 home runs and trails only injured shortstop Jeremy Pe\u00f1a for the team lead in both on-base percentage and slugging percentage.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re still looking for a left-handed bat, so that didn\u2019t change,\u201d Brown said on the radio show. \u201cIf it\u2019s an infielder, great. If it\u2019s an outfielder, we\u2019ll take that as well. It really didn\u2019t change much, it\u2019s just more of a preference to be an infielder now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Utilityman Mauricio Dub\u00f3n has started six of the Astros\u2019 eight games at third base since Paredes\u2019 injury. Second base also remains in flux after Jose Altuve accepted a position change to left field this winter, though Brown has intimated the club could move Altuve back to second base if it acquires an outfielder at the deadline.<\/p>\n
(Photo: Alika Jenner \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HOUSTON \u2014 The right hamstring strain suffered by Houston Astros All-Star third baseman Isaac Paredes \u201cis a little…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27354,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,11250,5163,591,85],"class_list":["post-27353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fantasy-baseball","tag-houston-astros","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27353\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}