DENVER -- Astros ace Hunter Brown will refrain from throwing for a few weeks after being diagnosed with a grade 2 right shoulder strain, the club announced before Tuesday night's 5-1 loss against the Rockies at Coors Field.
Brown was placed on the 15-day injured list for the first time in his career on Sunday, then flew to Houston to be examined by team doctors. Manager Joe Espada said Brown felt an issue with his shoulder during his routine throwing program on Friday.
“We’ll go back in two weeks and we’ll check him again, and we’ll see where we go from there,” Espada said on Tuesday. “But yeah, tough news.”
Espada added that the good news is that the issue is muscular, and there is no evidence of damage to ligaments.
As Houston grapples with how to get by without its top starter for at least the next several weeks, one area that the club hadn’t been concerned about entering Tuesday was its offense, which had scored the most runs (77) in the Majors.
That total increased by only one, as a Christian Walker home run was all Houston could muster against Colorado starter Kyle Freeland (6 1/3 innings) and reliever Antonio Senzatela (2 2/3) at the most hitter-friendly park in the Majors.
One run on three hits is unlike this lineup, which has bought into a patient approach that forces opponents to throw a lot of pitches. But Freeland needed just 81 to get through one out in the seventh, and Senzatela threw 26 the rest of the way.
“We really chased,” Espada said. “We really didn't kind of force [Freeland] to give us the pitches that we wanted to hit.”
The Astros have lost three straight and four of five on their current 10-game road trip. They’ve lost while scoring in bunches -- they scored 10 against the A’s on Sunday and seven in Monday’s loss to Colorado -- and they’ve now lost while hardly scoring at all.
Houston will move to a six-man rotation following Thursday’s off-day, even with Brown on the IL. Beginning Friday in Seattle, the Astros have 13 straight games without an off-day.
This past offseason, Houston added pitching depth by acquiring right-handers Tatsuya Imai, Mike Burrows, Kai-Wei Teng and Ryan Weiss. Righty Cody Bolton, who started Monday’s game at Coors Field, is another option who could give the Astros “70-80 pitches,” Espada said.
The Astros are likely to call up right-hander Spencer Arrighetti from Triple-A soon to insert him into the starting rotation. Arrighetti threw 78 pitches in 4 1/3 scoreless innings in his start Friday for the Space Cowboys in Jacksonville, Fla.
Replacing Brown is a tall order, and really, there’s no way to account for the absence of a 2025 Cy Young Award finalist.
Brown made his first Opening Day start on March 26 against the Angels and threw 102 pitches in 4 2/3 scoreless innings. He threw six innings of one-run ball in his second start on March 31 against the Red Sox, but was pulled after only 78 pitches. Espada said he wanted to dial back Brown’s pitch count after his heavy Opening Day workload.
“He’s never been injured, and this is new for all of us,” Espada said.
Brown is coming off the best season of his four-year career, which earned him a third-place finish in American League Cy Young Award voting. He assumed the role of Houston’s ace, going 12-9 with a 2.43 ERA and a career-low WHIP of 1.03 in 31 starts in 2025. He struck out a career-high 206 batters in 185 1/3 innings and allowed only 133 hits and was a constant in a rotation rocked by injuries in ‘25.
Brown had the longest scoreless-innings streak in the Major Leagues last year at 28 innings, from April 3-28 -- the fifth-longest single-season streak by an Astros starter in history.
The right-hander was named the AL Pitcher of the Month last June after posting a 1.19 ERA and a 0.82 WHIP in 30 1/3 innings, with the Astros winning all five of his starts during the month. He began the season with seven consecutive quality starts.
While they won’t be able to replicate what Brown brings to the mound, the Astros feel they’re better equipped to handle injuries in the rotation than they were when it was decimated by injuries last year.
“We feel a lot better than we were in previous seasons, right?” Espada said. “We do have a few guys in the bullpen right now that you can build up and they can be starters, or in short outings they could give you multiple innings.
“It’s impossible to replace a guy like Hunter, but we do have some guys who can step up and hold down the fort while he gets back.”