The Houston Astros are alone in first place in the American League West, two games ahead of the Texas Rangers. They also have two rested starting pitchers on their active roster. Yet on Saturday afternoon against the New York Mets, they are handing the ball to Bennett Sousa.
Sousa has not started a game for the Astros this season. The left-handed reliever has a 6.27 ERA in 22 appearances and 18⅔ innings, but he will get the ball one day after Hunter Brown finally gave Houston something it had gone two weeks without: a starting pitcher who completed six innings.
Brown worked 6⅔ innings in Friday’s 3-1 win over the Mets, striking out 10 and allowing one run. It was the first time in 14 games an Astros starter had completed six innings. Half the starts during that stretch lasted 4⅓ innings or fewer, and Houston’s rotation posted a 5.64 ERA.
For one night, Brown gave an exhausted bullpen some badly needed relief. Less than 24 hours later, the Astros are turning back to that bullpen to start a game.
The Astros Have Starters. They Just Aren’t Starting Them.
Ordinarily, a bullpen game would be easy enough to explain: Houston needs one because it does not have a rested starter available. That is not the situation Saturday. Cristian Javier and Tatsuya Imai are both rested, and either could ostensibly provide bulk innings behind Sousa. Instead, the Astros have chosen to begin the game with an opener.
The numbers provide a fairly good explanation for their reluctance. Javier has a 6.47 ERA in 40⅓ innings this season, while Imai has a 5.32 ERA in 67⅔ innings with 44 walks. Imai has not started since July 27 and has appeared only three times in August.
Imai was signed to a three-year, $54 million contract last offseason to become part of Houston’s rotation. He struggled badly enough as a starter that the Astros moved him to the bullpen, where his playing time has been scarce. The team has continued to tell him to stay ready, but with Imai rested, Houston is still choosing to start Sousa—a decision that says considerably more about the state of the rotation than it does about Sousa.
Ronel Blanco Hasn’t Solved the Problem
Ronel Blanco was supposed to provide another option when he returned from Tommy John surgery in July, but he has a 7.71 ERA in 23⅓ major league innings this season, allowing 20 earned runs and seven home runs. The Astros optioned him to Triple-A Sugar Land on Aug. 16 after he allowed five runs in four relief innings against Seattle.
His latest outing for Sugar Land did little to suggest that an immediate rotation solution is coming. Blanco was hit hard again Thursday, allowing 10 runs in 2⅓ innings.
Questions about Blanco’s health and readiness after Tommy John surgery are separate from the Astros’ immediate rotation problem. For Houston, the relevant fact is that a pitcher the team hoped would stabilize the rotation upon his return has not done so.
That leaves an increasingly short list of starters the Astros appear comfortable trusting. Hayden Wesneski has pitched well since returning from elbow surgery, but he has not exceeded 91 pitches in any of his six starts. Peter Lambert is nearing a career high in innings. Brown finally provided length Friday, but even he entered the game with only five starts of six or more innings among his first 14 this season.
The Astros have plenty of pitchers. What they do not appear to have are five starting pitchers they trust to start.
The Rotation’s Problem Has Become the Bullpen’s Problem
This arrangement would be easier to manage if Houston had a fresh bullpen waiting to absorb all those missing innings. Instead, the bullpen has spent much of the season compensating for short starts, and the workload has piled up.
Entering Friday, Steven Okert had made the third-most appearances among American League relievers, while AJ Blubaugh had thrown the most relief innings in the majors. Okert, Enyel De Los Santos, and Bryan Abreu were all among the 33 AL relievers who had appeared in at least 52 games.
Brown finally interrupted that cycle Friday by getting 20 outs. Abreu and Josh Hader needed to record only seven more to finish Houston’s 3-1 win, giving most of the bullpen a rare night without work.
Less than a day later, Houston’s solution to a rotation that has exhausted the bullpen is apparently to start the bullpen. There is something wonderfully 2026 Astros about that.
Sousa’s Start Says More Than His Results Will
The strategy could work. Sousa could give Houston a clean inning or two, Javier or Imai could provide length behind him, and the Astros could stitch together nine innings and beat a Mets team they held to one run Friday.
None of that would make Saturday’s decision less revealing. Houston enters the game 68-67 with a two-game lead over Texas, 27 games remaining, and a magic number of 26 to clinch the AL West. Every Astros win or Rangers loss now moves Houston closer to October, leaving little room for experimentation as the Astros try to sort out the pitching staff.
The Astros are trying to win a division while managing a rotation in which some pitchers are injured, some are returning from injuries, some are approaching workload concerns, and others are healthy enough to pitch but apparently not trusted enough to start. Houston brought Brent Strom back this week as a pitching consultant to help a staff desperately in need of answers. He certainly did not have to wait long to see what he was walking into.
Bennett Sousa starting a game in late August is not really a story about Bennett Sousa. It is a story about how few starting pitchers the first-place Astros actually trust.
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