The Astros keep collecting rotation bodies, but they still can’t quite stop the injury churn from circling back.
Houston already weathered a rough April when Tatsuya Imai, Hunter Brown and Cristian Javier all went down with injuries. Brown, Javier and Imai are back now, and the club also welcomed Ronel Blanco and Hayden Wesneski after major elbow surgeries from last year. That recovery wave even helped Houston feel comfortable moving Lance McCullers Jr. at the deadline to shed the rest of his contract.
Now Mike Burrows is the next name working through the pipeline.
Burrows, the right-hander Houston picked up in December in a three-team deal with the Pittsburgh Pirates, threw 55 pitches over three innings in a simulated game Saturday at the Astros complex in West Palm Beach, Fla., according to The Athletic’s Chandler Rome on X. His next stop is a rehab start with Triple-A Sugar Land next week.
From there, the path back to Houston is still fuzzy.
Burrows has been out since July 7 because of right elbow neuritis, and the month on the shelf means he’ll probably need at least two rehab outings before the Astros even think about activating him. As a rule, Houston wants its starters to reach 75 pitches in their last rehab game before making that call, and even then the team could ask for one more appearance depending on the state of the rotation.
There’s also the performance question. Before the injury, Burrows was 4-9 with a 5.99 ERA in 18 games, 17 of them starts. He struck out 75 and walked 35 across 94.2 innings, while opponents hit .292 against him.
His final outing came on July 6, when he gave up nine hits and seven earned runs in 4.1 innings, walked two and struck out three. He was optioned to the minors the next day, and even if he clears the pitch count threshold, promotion back to the big leagues is not guaranteed.
For now, Houston’s rotation is Brown, Javier, Blanco, Wesneski and Peter Lambert, with Imai shifted to the bullpen after recent struggles. That leaves Imai and Burrows as the only obvious rotation backups if another arm goes down.
And with the Astros, that kind of opening tends to show up. If it does, Burrows may have his clearest route back to the majors. First, though, he has to get through the rehab work in front of him.
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