{"id":548134,"date":"2026-03-20T03:08:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T03:08:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/548134\/"},"modified":"2026-03-20T03:08:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T03:08:10","slug":"astros-left-hander-bennett-sousa-to-open-season-on-injured-list-with-oblique-strain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/548134\/","title":{"rendered":"Astros left-hander Bennett Sousa to open season on injured list with oblique strain"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. \u2014\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportsnet.ca\/baseball\/mlb\/teams\/houston-astros\/\" class=\"sn-team-post-link\" target=\"_self\" data-team=\"houston-astros\" data-league=\"mlb\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Houston Astros<\/a>\u00a0left-hander Bennett Sousa will begin the season on the injured list, manager Joe Espada said Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>Sousa, 30, strained his left oblique in a Grapefruit League game last Thursday against the Washington Nationals. Sousa returned to Houston for further testing, but Espada said he would \u201cbe down for a while.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We\u2019re going to not have him throw until that pain goes away,\u201d Espada said.<\/p>\n<p>Last year was a breakout season for Sousa after sitting out the 2024 season due to injury. He appeared in 44 games in 2025, and posted a 2.84 ERA across 50 2\/3 innings with 59 strikeouts. But Sousa landed on the injured list on Aug. 20 with left elbow inflammation and didn&#8217;t return.<\/p>\n<p>The loss of Sousa is the latest blow to Houston&#8217;s bullpen. Last week, Espada said\u00a0All-Star closer Josh Hader\u00a0will begin the season on the 15-day injured list. Hader did not appear in any spring training games, and his buildup will extend past the Astros\u2019 opener against the Los Angeles Angels on March 26.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. \u2014\u00a0Houston Astros\u00a0left-hander Bennett Sousa will begin the season on the injured list, manager Joe&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":548135,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,462,82],"class_list":["post-548134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=548134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548134\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/548135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=548134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=548134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=548134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}