The Injury Bug Is Already Spoiling the Astros’ Season

The 2026 MLB season is only a few weeks old, and the Houston Astros already feel like they’re on the ropes.

Sure, it may be overly dramatic and a turnaround could be coming. But have you watched the games?

There’s been some players underperforming, and the pitching staff has been abysmal, highlighted by their league-worst 6.17 team ERA.

Yainer Diaz has continued to be a shell of himself with a .510 OPS with a lot of wild, uncompetitive swings early in counts. Isaac Paredes has found everyday work (we’re getting to why), but he too has an OPS below .700, sitting at .639.

While the offense as a whole has been the only silver lining to this point, those are some noteworthy players underperforming expectations to this point.

On the pitching side of things, there’s only been five pitchers who have appeared in a game and have an ERA below 4.00 (Hunter Brown, Kai-Wei Teng, Bryan King, Enyel de los Santos, and Spencer Arrighetti).

Bryan Abreu has more than two walks per inning while serving as the closer for a team that hasn’t needed many games saved, Mike Burrows has shown none of the promise he did at the end of the season for Pittsburgh a season ago, and Lance McCullers Jr. has been available and wholly unproductive (5.87 ERA in 15.1 innings) when the team needs him.

A lot of this can be chalked up to guys needing to fill roles they’re unqualified for, and the injuries are starting to really pile up.

The Injury Bug Striking at the Wrong Time

Brown, the Astros’ ace from a season ago who struck out 17 while allowing one earned run and 11 baserunners in his first 10.2 innings of 2026, is down for now with a shoulder strain. It was announced on April 7 that he wasn’t throwing for a few weeks, but that doesn’t promise anything.

Shoulders are tricky, especially for guys with high-octane stuff like Brown, and it could be anywhere from another week or two to another couple months before Houston gets its ace back.

Tatsuya Imai looked like the guy who signed on for $18 million per season in his second start against the Athletics, but the other two outings were dreadful and now he’s out with arm fatigue. Given how early in the season it is, that isn’t the best news for a team already without its top arm.

Cristian Javier is also battling a strained shoulder after three very poor outings, Cody Bolton went down with back inflammation after getting roughed up in two of three appearances, and both Ronel Blanco and Hayden Wesneski will both likely miss the whole season after undergoing Tommy John surgery in mid-2025.

Meanwhile, Josh Hader and Nate Pearson both haven’t pitched in relief this season due to injury, and Bennett Sousa also went down early on.

That has left the Astros with a four-man rotation of Burrows, McCullers, Arrighetti and Colton Gordon. Teng, Christian Roa, AJ Blubaugh and J.P. France were all supposed to be depth options but are instead in Houston early and tasked with propping up a sinking staff.

Just watching the Astros try to get outs can be painful at times, with the team walking 106 batters in 153.1 frames. The -1.5 bWAR as a staff also backs that up, which is impressive given Brown has accumulated 0.7 bWAR in 10.2 innings.

The offense has been solid, no doubt, but Jeremy Peña going down with a strained hamstring certainly didn’t help. He had a .653 OPS in 10 games, but Peña is a pest at the dish and one of the game’s elite defenders at shortstop. Though his injury is said to be minor, a strained hamstring can linger throughout the year for such a dynamic player.

This has opened a semi-regular spot in the lineup for the slumping Paredes, but the light-hitting Nick Allen is taking reps at short when Carlos Correa slides over. Allen, a career 54-wRC+ hitter, doesn’t exactly have the same offensive presence in the lineup as Peña.

Jake Meyers, the starting center fielder, is also injured with a strained oblique. For a guy whose entire game revolves around speed and athleticism, that isn’t great to say the least. It also forces Joey Loperfido and Taylor Trammell to man center, which is a definite defensive downgrade.

The Astros currently have 13 players on the injured list, most of which are noteworthy names, and all these injuries have forced some Quad-A players or midseason depth options up into critical roles early in April.

Combine the myriad of injuries with some poor pitching, and even the Astros’ offense is struggling to keep this team afloat. It’s early to be standings watching, but Houston is looking at a potentially long road to avoid their second straight missed postseason.