\u201cIt\u2019s hard. You don\u2019t want to get any of your players hurt,\u201d franchise cornerstone Jose Altuve said. \u201cWe felt bad individually for them. We know how hard they\u2019re working to stay healthy and you feel really bad. At the same time, you have to continue the game, but it just sucks that happened to them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not since Altuve\u2019s rookie season in 2012 had the Astros been swept in a three-game series at Coors Field. Houston was still a National League team then. It fancies itself an American League contender these days, even if nothing about this series suggested as much. Colorado outscored the Astros 23-9.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe got to flush this quickly,\u201d said manager Joe Espada, a mild-mannered man who almost always exudes positivity.<\/p>\n
After a wretched Wednesday afternoon, Espada turned terse, offering 84 words worth of responses to five postgame questions. Of the two players he lost to injury in an instant:<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not what I want to see,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s just hard. It\u2019s hard. It\u2019s hard.\u201d<\/p>\n
Six-month seasons rarely spiral out of control in April. Espada\u2019s first Astros team proved it. That club captured an American League West title after starting the season 12-24. This one is 6-7. The defending division champion Seattle Mariners, who the Astros will face for four games this weekend, sit at 4-9.<\/p>\n
An eternity remains in the season, however enraging this week has felt. Maybe, months from now, it will be remembered as a nadir not the start of something worse.<\/p>\n
\u201cI trust these guys,\u201d Espada said. \u201cThey know how to do it. They know how to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/GettyImages-2269829381-scaled.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n Cristian Javier made it through just one inning Wednesday, allowing one run on three hits. (Justin Edmonds \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n
Still, injuries to Javier and ace Hunter Brown have Houston\u2019s rotation in tatters, applying stress on a group of relievers that can\u2019t shoulder it. Houston\u2019s bullpen boasts the highest ERA in the league at 7.09. None has issued more walks than the 36 handed out by Astros relievers.<\/p>\n
Fill-in closer Bryan Abreu issued two in mop-up duty, prolonging his pitiful beginning to the season and underscoring the massive void left by six-time All-Star Josh Hader.<\/p>\n
Beginning a stretch of 13 consecutive games Friday will only exacerbate the problem. Brown is nursing a Grade 2 shoulder strain and won\u2019t pitch in any of them. It\u2019s difficult to envision Javier will, either, after exiting Wednesday\u2019s game with what the Astros described as right shoulder tightness.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m very disappointed,\u201d Javier said through an interpreter. \u201cWe had lost the last two games and then the bullpen had been used a lot. I felt like the team needed me out there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Javier, who underwent Tommy John surgery in June 2024, said he felt tightness while recording his final out of the first inning. After throwing a warmup pitch prior to the second, Javier called catcher Christian V\u00e1zquez to the mound and summoned athletic trainers from Houston\u2019s dugout. He left the field after a brief conversation.<\/p>\n
Initial strength tests performed after his departure \u201ccame out very good,\u201d according to Javier, though he added, \u201cwe want to look at it more deeply.\u201d Javier said he hadn\u2019t discussed his next steps or whether he would accompany the Astros to Seattle on the final leg of this 10-game road trip.<\/p>\n
Meyers will not.<\/p>\n
Five minutes before Javier took the mound for that ill-fated warmup pitch, Meyers held his right side after a check swing. Espada and a trainer visited the center fielder, who took a practice swing and deemed himself ready to continue the at-bat.<\/p>\n
\u201cTook a harder (check-swing) and it tightened up more,\u201d Meyers said.<\/p>\n
Meyers said he will travel back to Houston, undergo imaging and visit team doctors. A stint on the injured list seems almost guaranteed, which will expose more problems. The Astros have one healthy position player on their 40-man roster who is not in the major leagues: infielder Shay Whitcomb, whom the team has all but avoided playing whenever he is summoned as a roster filler.<\/p>\n
Veteran outfielder Taylor Trammell, who was scratched from Triple-A Sugar Land\u2019s lineup Wednesday afternoon, is the most logical choice to replace Meyers if a roster move must be made. Prospect Brice Matthews, a converted infielder, could be in line for more outfield at-bats if Meyers misses time. Ditto for Joey Loperfido.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe injuries have piled on and it\u2019s not a good feeling, but if there\u2019s a team that knows how to bounce back, it\u2019s this group in there,\u201d Espada said.<\/p>\n
Scoring two runs across the final 18 frames inside a hitter\u2019s paradise casts a pall on this positive, but the Astros do still boast baseball\u2019s highest-scoring offense. It is perhaps the sole reason they\u2019re just one game under .500. Maintaining that is mandatory given the mess that is Houston\u2019s pitching staff.<\/p>\n
As of Wednesday morning, the team planned to deploy a six-man rotation following Thursday\u2019s off day, even in Brown\u2019s absence. Whether Javier\u2019s injury will alter the idea is unclear. Tatsuya Imai is scheduled to start Friday against the Mariners and Lance McCullers Jr. will pitch on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Anything beyond that is ambiguous.<\/p>\n
Spencer Arrighetti should play a prominent role. Peter Lambert, Colton Gordon and Jason Alexander could, too. Long relievers Ryan Weiss and Kai-Wei Teng, acquired this offseason to offer depth for situations like this, could be stretched out to start.<\/p>\n
Enough available bodies exist to fill the void. Few of them can equal the upside of Brown, a reigning American League Cy Young Award finalist, or Javier, who has proven in the past he can function as a top-end starting pitcher. He posted a 2.54 ERA in 2022 and started two combined no-hitters.<\/p>\n
Allowing Framber Valdez to leave in free agency this winter only heightened the need for Javier to bounce back \u2014 and perhaps accentuated the Astros\u2019 faith that he could. General manager Dana Brown, in his final season under contract, added six pitchers this winter to protect himself against the alternative.<\/p>\n
He is about to see whether it worked.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DENVER \u2014 The Astros found hell on an overcast day in downtown Denver. Their everyday center fielder and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":572986,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[373,363,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-572985","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-houston-astros","9":"tag-mlb","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572985","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=572985"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572985\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/572986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=572985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=572985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=572985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}