Astros off to worst start in over a decade as their pitching crisis keeps escalating (2024)

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Amid the most miserable inning in a month full of them, the Astros made an announcement. Right-handed reliever Miguel Díaz cleared outright waivers, but elected free agency instead of staying with an organization that bungled his brief tenure.

Díaz became an Astro on the day this disastrous seven-game road trip began. At best, Houston hoped he could add competition to its compromised bullpen. At worst, Díaz brought a fresh right arm to a relief corps searching for one.

Díaz threw 10 pitches during his first day with the team, completing a game Hunter Brown gave the club no chance to win. Díaz went unused during Houston’s next two games, arrived at the Globe Life Field on Monday and met a curious fate.

Houston designating Díaz for assignment befuddled rival executives well aware of the Astros’ gaping roster holes. The middle of their bullpen is vulnerable, full of young pitchers who haven’t proven they’re capable of sustaining the workload required for a full major-league season. The team scratched Framber Valdez that afternoon with an elbow problem, making this a day Houston needed every arm possible. Team officials maintained mindless optimism that Valdez wouldn’t require a trip to the injured list. The Astros placed him on the IL on Tuesday.

Rafael Montero and Ryan Pressly were unavailable after pitching on back-to-back days, meaning the Astros deployed a five-man bullpen behind a starter who had no business pitching in the big leagues. Blair Henley secured one out in his major-league debut, but assigning him any blame for what followed for the next four days is foolish. Don’t absolve the Astros’ absence of clutch hitting, either. The lineup stranded 13 more baserunners on Thursday and finished 2-for-13 with runners in scoring position, plummeting their season-long slash line to .229/.292/.313 with RISP.

Houston didn’t reach rock bottom on Thursday because Henley had a horrible night or Díaz departed the organization. Both are byproducts of bigger problems permeating a club creeping toward a catastrophe.

Who ordered the nine-run inning? pic.twitter.com/Cp7re3pb3a

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— Kansas City Royals (@Royals) April 11, 2024

Brown brought it closer on Thursday, becoming the first pitcher in major-league history to allow 11 hits while pitching less than one inning. The Royals scored nine runs and made two outs while he worked, waltzing to a 13-3 win that sent the Astros six games under .500. Houston hasn’t started 4-10 since 2013 — a season in which it lost 111 games.

Kansas City crushed 13 balls in play that averaged a 95.6 mph exit velocity. Five of its hits left bats harder than 100 mph. Bobby Witt Jr. had two 105.4 mph hits by himself — a single shot up the middle and an opposite-field home run into winds howling from left to right.

“I put us in a really tough spot with the bullpen,” Brown said, “but I have to just respond to this adversity and come back for the next one.”

Brown threw 41 pitches before manager Joe Espada removed him. Spencer Arrighetti needed 43 to finish the third inning during his major-league debut on Wednesday. Stretching a pitcher that far in any month is anomalous, but in April even more so.

Doing it to two young arms still finding their major-league footing is borderline dangerous, but Espada has few other options. He’s been given a roster ill-equipped to absorb an avalanche of pitching injuries, three of which were already known about either throughout this winter or right as spring training began. When José Urquidy strained his forearm two weeks before Opening Day, three established free-agent starters remained available.

The Astros coveted one of them, Blake Snell, but failed to meet his asking price. When the pursuit ended, general manager Dana Brown told The Athletic, “You have to be on the market for a guy that’s a huge piece like that. But the other guys that are available, they compare to all of our guys that we have depth with.”

Fourteen games into the season, his starting pitchers have posted a 5.05 ERA across 66 innings. Houston’s rotation finished the second half of last season with a 4.74 mark. The team exhausted its last piece of promising depth by promoting Arrighetti on Wednesday for a start some wondered if he was even ready to make.

Brown spent six weeks of spring training in West Palm Beach praising depth that did not exist. He supposed that Luis Garcia and Lance McCullers Jr. would solve shortcomings when they returned after the All-Star break while putting faith in unproven internal bullpen options.

The Texas Rangers have three starters expected back after the All-Star break, too, but still found it useful to give Michael Lorenzen $4.5 million as an insurance policy. Leverage relievers in the Seattle Mariners’ bullpen sustained some injuries in spring training, so they signed Ryne Stanek to a $4 million deal in response. All of Houston’s pitching expenses this winter went to Josh Hader, a $95 million closer now with no games to close.

Brown’s decision to sign one major-league reliever after losing 207 1/3 innings from his 2023 bullpen put undue pressure on a stable of young pitchers not ready to shoulder it. His actions early this season then put their viability for the season in jeopardy.

On the day Brown designated Díaz for assignment, and Houston played a pitcher short, Brandon Bielak needed 23 pitches to procure six outs. He threw 63 pitches three days earlier — the same game in which Hunter Brown imploded and Díaz appeared for the only time as an Astro.Bielak added 50 more pitches on Wednesday in relief of Arrighetti — the final piece of that supposed depth bragged about during spring training.

Bielak has thrown 146 pitches in the past six days. Parker Mushinski, one of the few optionable relievers in Houston’s bullpen, threw 54 across 2 2/3 innings after Arrighetti departed on Wednesday. Mushinski had never thrown more than 38 in a major-league game. Seth Martinez has contributed 74 pitches in the past seven days, too.

Given the state of its starting rotation, Houston will need all three of these relievers to contribute for five more months. Whether their arms will allow it is another matter entirely. In a part of the season where pitchers are supposed to be monitored more closely, the Astros are asking them to exceed any reasonable expectations.

“It is something that I think about all the time. Trying to keep those guys healthy is important for us to accomplish our goal, Espada said. “But, at some point, we’re going to get the starters to do their job and they will. They’ve done it in the past, it’s just a matter of time.”

Espada and pitching coach Josh Miller have little choice. Those starters Dana Brown placed so much faith in have worked 66 innings across the season’s first 14 games. On this road trip alone, Hunter Brown recorded 11 outs across two starts. Henley and Arrighetti teamed to collect 10.

Overworking Pressly, Montero, Hader or Bryan Abreu in April would be even more illogical than how the team is currently operating, so Bielak, Mushinski, Martinez and Tayler Scott must pay the price. Bielak and Scott are out of minor-league options, meaning they’re stuck in this scenario.

Martinez has one option left, but he’s been one of the team’s most effective and efficient relievers. Abreu has one, too, but isn’t being demoted unless disaster strikes. Sending Hunter Brown down to work through his struggles could happen, but Houston has no one to take his place in the rotation until Justin Verlander is ready to return.

Verlander still needs one more minor-league rehab start before being activated off the injured list. After Thursday’s game, Espada said that plan won’t change, but it’s worth wondering whether anything Verlander can contribute may be better served for the major-league team. Houston desperately needs depth from its starters and, if Verlander is capable of one thing, it is finding ways to eat innings even without his best stuff.

Three games against the defending World Series champion Texas Rangers loom before three more against the Atlanta Braves. Both feature the sort of lineups that can pummel vulnerable pitching staffs. Few of them in the sport feel more fragile than Houston’s.

(Photo of Hunter Brown: Colin E. Braley / Associated Press)