Spencer Arrighetti knows what it feels like to watch a season fall apart from the inside. A broken right thumb in 2025, then elbow inflammation, then shutdown: seven starts and a 5.35 ERA in what should have been a breakout year. If anyone on this roster understands what the guys on the injured list are going through right now, it’s him.
Tonight he takes the mound in Cincinnati looking to improve to 5-0, which is about as good an answer to adversity as the Houston Astros could have hoped for. The 26-year-old right-hander didn’t make the Opening Day roster—he began the season at Triple-A Sugar Land—but injuries to Hunter Brown, Cristian Javier, and Tatsuya Imai forced the Astros’ hand, and Arrighetti has answered every time.
He has allowed two earned runs or fewer in each of his four starts this season, posting a 10.5 strikeout-per-nine-innings rate and going the distance into the seventh inning against the Yankees in his most recent outing, allowing one earned run on three hits while striking out eight. On a staff with the highest ERA in baseball, he has been a revelation.
It hasn’t always been this way. Arrighetti’s 2025 season was derailed before it began. A broken right thumb suffered in batting practice in Seattle limited him to seven starts, and right elbow inflammation ended his season in August. He posted a 5.35 ERA in 35⅓ innings. The Astros optioned him to Sugar Land before Opening Day this year, and he was stretched out as a starter there in anticipation of exactly this kind of emergency.
A local product, Arrighetti attended Cinco Ranch High School in Katy before going undrafted and heading to the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. He was a sixth-round pick by the Astros in 2021 and was named the organization’s Minor League Pitcher of the Year in 2023. He made his MLB debut in 2024 and showed enough to earn a rotation spot before the thumb ended things early.
Tonight he faces a Cincinnati Reds team that has lost nine in a row. Chase Burns takes the mound for Cincinnati. First pitch is at 3:10 p.m. CT.
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