{"id":421237,"date":"2026-08-30T19:54:13","date_gmt":"2026-08-30T19:54:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/421237\/"},"modified":"2026-08-30T19:54:13","modified_gmt":"2026-08-30T19:54:13","slug":"houston-astros-consider-openers-as-starting-rotation-struggles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/421237\/","title":{"rendered":"Houston Astros consider openers as starting rotation struggles"},"content":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK\u00a0\u2014 With question marks in their starting rotation, the Houston Astros<\/a> could deploy openers on occasion over the season\u2019s final month, manager Joe Espada said Sunday.<\/p>\n

The Astros have three starters regularly providing length right now in Hunter Brown, Peter Lambert and Hayden Wesneski. Ethan Pecko<\/a> made his third major-league start Sunday, with neither of the first two exceeding 4 \u2153 innings. Houston opted to use left-hander Bennett Sousa as an opener Saturday rather than start Javier, who has a 6.45 ERA and has allowed a 1.104 OPS his second time through lineups.<\/p>\n

After the 13-game stretch, which ends Sept. 6, Houston will not play more than six straight days the rest of the season. But finding a way to extract more length from its starters\u00a0\u2014 who were tied for the second-fewest innings in the majors in August entering Sunday\u00a0\u2014 is a priority for a team that carried a two-game division lead into its series finale at Citi Field.<\/p>\n

Espada said Sunday the Astros could consider using openers ahead of \u201ccertain guys\u201d down the stretch. Javier would seem a likely candidate due to his struggles later in outings. Projecting the club\u2019s rotation plans is difficult given the unit\u2019s inconstancy, but an occasional opener-bulk reliever combination could expand its options to cover innings, albeit at the risk of taxing a bullpen already seeing a big workload.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I can get some early innings from some of our relievers to get that bulk guy through six innings, five innings, and then see (where) we are in the game, then I could deploy either a high leverage or middle leverage guy,\u201d\u00a0Espada said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re just trying to do different things, just trying to get through this long stretch of games and trying to give our team, our offense, an opportunity to win games. So yes, that will be something that we\u2019ll be doing more of.\u201d<\/p>\n

The strategy saw mixed results Saturday. Sousa retired two of five batters faced as the opener, allowing one run and pressing Javier into the game in the first inning. Javier allowed no further damage until the fifth, when the Mets scored three runs against him. Houston used two more relievers, Enyel De Los Santos and Kai-Wei-Teng, to cover the final three innings of a 6-2 loss.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK\u00a0\u2014 With question marks in their starting rotation, the Houston Astros could deploy openers on occasion over…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":421238,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[56,58,57],"class_list":["post-421237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=421237"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421237\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/421238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=421237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=421237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=421237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}