Spring has not been kind to the Houston Astros and their starting rotation.
They got some bad news early on when Justin Verlander announced that he was a bit behind schedule dealing with an elbow issue. This prompted them to put their ace on the injured list to start the season.
With the Astros already down one starter, Jose Urquidy then also got injured.
He was later diagnosed with a forearm strain, but said that he was feeling pain in his elbow as well, something that no pitcher and team wants to hear.
Because of that, he's also going on the injured list to start the year.
After not signing Blake Snell in free agency, Houston will now be more reliant on their internal options than ever to step up and fill the void that these two starters left behind.
The good news is they might have a player in this rotation ready to explode.
Former MLB executive Jim Bowden has placed Hunter Brown on his 2024 All-MLB Breakout Team.
"The 25-year-old has the raw stuff to develop into an ace but needs to limit his misses over the middle of the plate if he's going to break out in 2024," Bowden writes in an article for The Athletic.
During Brown's rookie season in 2023, he looked every bit like the future ace that he was billed to become during his minor league career.
The right-hander had a 3.62 ERA over his first 15 starts.
However, he ran into trouble later in the year which caused him to finish up the season with an ERA of 5.09 and a move into the bullpen.
"Brown spent the offseason working on cleaning up his delivery with a goal of having a more consistent release point that in turn will lead to better control and command," Bowden writes.
That's a positive sign.
If he can clean up the things that got him into trouble, then the Astros should be in really good hands when Verlander returns to the rotation, and the trio of Urquidy, Lance McCullars Jr., and Luis Garcia rejoin the team.
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