SEATTLE -- The injury woes continue to mount for the Astros, with shortstop Jeremy Peña and right-handed pitcher Tatsuya Imai landing on the injured list Monday.
Peña was placed on the 10-day injured list with a Grade 1 right hamstring strain and Imai was placed on the 15-day IL with right arm fatigue. The club also optioned right-hander Jayden Murray to Triple-A Sugar Land and recalled right-hander J.P. France, left-hander Colton Gordon and infielder Shay Whitcomb from Triple-A.
Peña was removed in the fourth inning of Saturday’s game after complaining of tightness behind his right knee, and he didn’t play Sunday. Peña said Monday he didn’t have a timeline on when he could return, but he wants to make sure he’s 100 percent.
“It sucks,” Peña said. “Obviously, you want to be out there, you want to play, you want to be able to post up with the team. It’s unfortunate the way it happened, but I’m a believer that everything happens for a reason, and we’re going to work to get back.”
Imai flew back to Houston on Saturday after complaining of arm fatigue during Friday’s loss, in which he recorded just one out and struggled to throw strikes. Astros manager Joe Espada said Imai was undergoing more testing Monday.
Coming off a career season, Peña is off to a slow start this year because of health. He fractured the ring finger on his right hand during an exhibition game while playing for the Dominican Republic’s World Baseball Classic team in March, which took him out of the tournament. He was on the Astros’ Opening Day roster, but didn’t play every day during the first week of the season.
“Even when I was dealing with the finger injury, I stayed on top of my legs, I was still staying on top of my body,” he said. “That’s why we were so comfortable starting the season with the team. I felt really good, my body felt great. It was just an unfortunate thing.”
Imai, making the third start of his career, faced only eight hitters Friday, walking four of them, hitting one and allowing three runs on one hit. He has a 54 percent strike percentage through three starts, and on Friday, he threw only 17 of 37 pitches for strikes. He had one whiff on 13 swings.
Last week, Astros starting pitchers Hunter Brown and Cristian Javier landed on the 15-day IL with Grade 2 right shoulder strains, meaning three-fifths of Houston’s Opening Day rotation has been put on the IL within the first three weeks of the season.
“In the baseball season and in life, there’s moments of prosperity and moments of challenges,” Espada said. “You gotta prepare yourself every single day, through the good ones and the bad ones. We’ll get through it… I don’t like when our players are injured, you know? They work really hard in the offseason to come back in shape. Expectations are for us to go out there and perform and get back to the postseason, and this makes it tough to hear our guys getting banged up. We’ll fight through this.”