{"id":534166,"date":"2026-03-20T05:24:16","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T05:24:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/534166\/"},"modified":"2026-03-20T05:24:16","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T05:24:16","slug":"astros-bennett-sousa-down-for-a-while-with-oblique-strain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/534166\/","title":{"rendered":"Astros&#8217; Bennett Sousa &#8216;down for a while&#8217; with oblique strain"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao MvWXB TjIXL aGjvy ebVHC \">WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. &#8212; <a class=\"zZygg UbGlr iFzkS qdXbA WCDhQ DbOXS tqUtK GpWVU iJYzE \" data-testid=\"prism-linkbase\" href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/mlb\/team\/_\/name\/hou\/houston-astros\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Houston Astros<\/a> left-hander <a class=\"zZygg UbGlr iFzkS qdXbA WCDhQ DbOXS tqUtK GpWVU iJYzE \" data-testid=\"prism-linkbase\" href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/mlb\/player\/_\/id\/41776\/bennett-sousa\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Bennett Sousa<\/a> will begin the season on the injured list, manager Joe Espada said Thursday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">Sousa, 30, strained his left oblique in a Grapefruit League game last Thursday against the <a class=\"zZygg UbGlr iFzkS qdXbA WCDhQ DbOXS tqUtK GpWVU iJYzE \" data-testid=\"prism-linkbase\" href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/mlb\/team\/_\/name\/wsh\/washington-nationals\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Washington Nationals<\/a>. Sousa returned to Houston for further testing, but Espada said he would &#8220;be down for a while.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">&#8220;We&#8217;re going to not have him throw until that pain goes away,&#8221; Espada said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">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 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 class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC eTIW sUzSN \">The loss of Sousa is the latest blow to Houston&#8217;s bullpen. Last week, Espada said All-Star closer <a class=\"zZygg UbGlr iFzkS qdXbA WCDhQ DbOXS tqUtK GpWVU iJYzE \" data-testid=\"prism-linkbase\" href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/mlb\/player\/_\/id\/32760\/josh-hader\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">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&#8217; opener against the<a class=\"zZygg UbGlr iFzkS qdXbA WCDhQ DbOXS tqUtK GpWVU iJYzE \" data-testid=\"prism-linkbase\" href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/mlb\/team\/_\/name\/laa\/los-angeles-angels\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Los Angeles Angels<\/a>on March 26.<\/p>\n<p>Copyright \u00a9 2026 ESPN Internet Ventures. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. &#8212; Houston Astros left-hander Bennett Sousa will begin the season on the injured list,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":534167,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[239815,352,373,363,3,239814,99],"class_list":["post-534166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-239815","tag-espn","tag-houston-astros","tag-mlb","tag-news","tag-sousa-bennett","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534166","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=534166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534166\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/534167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=534166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=534166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=534166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}