Fourteen games into the 2026 season, the Houston Astros are 6-8, losers of five straight, and are dealing with a pitching situation that has gone from concerning to alarming in the span of one week.
Manager Joe Espada is staying positive. “We’ll figure it out,” he said after Friday’s 9-6 loss to the Seattle Mariners. “It’s game 14, right?”
He’s not wrong that it’s early. But the math is getting harder to ignore.
The ERA Says Enough
In eight of their first 14 games, an Astros starter has failed to reach the fifth inning. The team ERA entering Saturday sits at 6.32, highest in the majors. The bullpen, which entered Friday already carrying the highest ERA in baseball, has been asked to cover enormous workloads on a near-nightly basis and now faces a stretch of 13 consecutive games without an off day. The relief corps has allowed the most walks and the most hits in the sport. These are not fluky numbers. These are trends.
And then there are the injuries.
Hunter Brown, the staff ace, went down April 5 with a Grade 2 right shoulder strain. Three days later, Cristian Javier walked off the mound at Coors Field with the same diagnosis. Both are on the 15-day injured list. Neither has a return timeline. Both will be reevaluated in approximately two weeks, which, given the nature of Grade 2 strains, does not guarantee anything resembling good news.
Who’s Actually Available
That leaves Mike Burrows, Tatsuya Imai, and Lance McCullers Jr. as the only active starters from the opening day rotation. Burrows has an ERA north of 5.00. Imai, whose “wrong-way slider” generated so much excitement heading into Friday’s series opener in Seattle, lasted just one out—his command completely absent on a cool night on an unfamiliar mound. McCullers takes the ball Saturday, and the hope is that he can provide something resembling stability.
After the game, Imai offered an explanation that raised as many questions as it answered. “My impression of this stadium, the mound was really hard,” he said through an interpreter, adding that the cool Seattle weather was also a factor. Espada acknowledged the Astros are “learning, right, as we go” with their new starter. That may be true. But “the mound was hard” is a difficult explanation to sit with when your team is desperate for innings.
Beyond those three, the Astros are working with J.P. France, who was recalled from Triple-A on Friday and was immediately thrust into a long relief role, allowing four runs in 2.2 innings. Ryan Weiss is doing his best. Cody Bolton has been useful. But these are depth pieces being asked to play starring roles, and the difference is showing up in the box score every night.
Meanwhile, the Offense …
The cruel irony of this situation is that the offense has been almost entirely blameless. Houston leads the majors in runs scored and on-base percentage. In three of the five losses on this current skid, the Astros have scored at least six runs. Last season, they went 45-5 when scoring six or more. This year, those games are becoming losses because the pitching simply cannot hold.
There are reasons for cautious optimism, but they require some patience. Josh Hader, sidelined since spring training with biceps tendinitis, is expected to begin facing hitters during the week of April 13 and could return to the closer’s role by late April or early May. Bennett Sousa is on a rehab assignment. Nate Pearson is progressing. The cavalry is coming—just not today, and not necessarily soon enough.
The six-man rotation the Astros planned to use during this 13-game stretch was designed to manage workloads and ease Imai’s transition from Japan’s pitching schedule. It was a sensible plan when Brown and Javier were healthy. Now it requires a deeper dive into the system. Spencer Arrighetti, who threw six innings for Triple-A Sugar Land on Thursday, striking out seven while allowing two runs, will almost certainly get a start in Houston next week. Jason Alexander is also in the picture: He threw seven scoreless innings against Tacoma on Tuesday and went 4-0 with a 3.27 ERA on the road last season. Neither is a front-line option, but both are legitimate arms who can eat innings. The depth exists. Whether it’s enough is another question entirely.
That is the question Dana Brown and Joe Espada need to answer, and “we’ll figure it out,” however well-intentioned, is going to need some specifics behind it. The schedule doesn’t care about good intentions, and neither does a bullpen already running on fumes.
The Astros are a good team. The talent is real. But good teams can lose a lot of games in a hurry when their pitching collapses, and right now Houston’s pitching isn’t so much struggling as it is simply not there. “We’ll figure it out” isn’t a plan—it’s what you say when you don’t have one.
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