{"id":534040,"date":"2026-03-20T03:50:13","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T03:50:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/534040\/"},"modified":"2026-03-20T03:50:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T03:50:13","slug":"astros-lefty-bennett-sousa-to-open-season-on-il-with-oblique-strain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/534040\/","title":{"rendered":"Astros lefty Bennett Sousa to open season on IL with oblique strain"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) \u2014 <a class=\"Link AnClick-LinkEnhancement\" data-gtm-enhancement-style=\"LinkEnhancementA\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/houston-astros\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Houston Astros<\/a> left-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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\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\u2019t return.<\/p>\n<p>The loss of Sousa is the latest blow to Houston\u2019s bullpen. Last week, Espada said <a class=\"Link AnClick-LinkEnhancement\" data-gtm-enhancement-style=\"LinkEnhancementA\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/hader-astros-il-biceps-3749106662c5c653b731db5159daa27b\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">All-Star closer Josh Hader<\/a> will 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 Angles on March 26.<\/p>\n<p>___<\/p>\n<p>AP MLB: <a class=\"Link AnClick-LinkEnhancement\" data-gtm-enhancement-style=\"LinkEnhancementA\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/mlb\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/MLB<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) \u2014 Houston Astros left-hander Bennett Sousa will begin the season on the injured&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":534041,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[1558,239790,2822,2808,7095,373,59356,59357,363,2008,10600,99,1022,1059,2331],"class_list":["post-534040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-baseball","tag-bennett-sousa","tag-fl-state-wire","tag-florida","tag-houston","tag-houston-astros","tag-joe-espada","tag-josh-hader","tag-mlb","tag-mlb-baseball","tag-mlb-spring-training","tag-sports","tag-texas","tag-tx-state-wire","tag-washington-nationals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=534040"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534040\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/534041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=534040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=534040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=534040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}