You can never have too much pitching…really?

Woody Allen in the movie Annie Hall – There’s an old joke – um… two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of ’em says, “Boy, the food at this place is really terrible.” The other one says, “Yeah, I know; and such small portions.”

From Dan P’s point of view, I would change the title of this post to “You can never have too much good pitching.”

Right now, a major problem with the Astros’ starting pitching is that it is coming in larger portions of bad or uncertain quality.

• Mike Burrows pitched a decent number of innings for the Astros, but unfortunately, he pitched most of them in an indecent fashion and has been sent down to AAA.
• Tatsuya Imai is the king of uncertainty, as he has bounced between the Good (the first six innings of a no-hitter), the Bad (3 of 13 starts in which he went 1.1 innings or less), and the Ugly (Tuesday night, when he needed 84 pitches to get through 3.2 innings).
• Spencer Arrighetti – Arrighetti went from AL Pitcher of the Month in May to a pitcher nobody wanted in June. That improved in his first start in July and crashed in his disaster of a second start this month.
• Hunter Brown – Pitched well until his arm started hurting, and has been a bit of a question mark since returning from the IL.
• The Vast Unwashed – Lance McCullers (6.88 ERA in 8 starts), Kai-Wei Teng (5.52 ERA in 10 starts), Cristian Javier (12.54 ERA in 3 starts), Jason Alexander (6.75 ERA in 2 starts) and Ryan Weiss (5.14 ERA in 2 starts). Weiss is gone. Alexander and Teng are back in AAA with Alexander currently injured and Teng adjusting to being a reliever again. McCullers is rehabbing in the minors and Javier has returned to the big club as a reliever (so far).

Where we are headed with this: You can have too much pitching (when it is bad or of uncertain quality). On top of this, the following is coming soon to a team near you.

• Cristian Javier is back, but is he ready to take Mike Burrows spot in the rotation? Based on his pitching before his injury he might be very bad. Based on his two outings after his return – he might be OK,,,or not.
• Ethan Pecko – Based on one recent interview with Dana Brown, Pecko (3-5, 4.78 ERA) might make that start in Burrows place. His numbers are not making me jump up and down.
• Ronel Blanco – Blanco has pitched well in his rehab after recovery from TJ surgery. His last outing was 2 perfect innings at AAA – shortened by rain. He might be a good addition to the staff – but anyone returning from that type of surgery is a big question mark. And he will have to build up his innings a bit.
• Lance McCullers Jr. – He has posted a 2.45 ERA in 3 starts at AAA. In his last rehab start he gave up 4 runs (2 earned) over 4 innings giving up 3 walks and 3 hits. Is there any hope he will be better than the guy who was trying to pitch through pain at the beginning of the season?
• Hayden Wesneski – Like Blanco he is returning from TJ surgery and has just started his rehab – throwing 4 innings at AA Corpus with a 2.25 ERA. He pitched decently in 2025 before his injury, but again, when and what can the Astros expect from him?

The Astros are currently 11^th in the AL in innings pitched by their starters. However, if you take into account that they’ve played three more games than #12 and five more than #13, they are on pace to finish behind those two teams. On top of this, adding pitchers returning from the IL to the starting staff is not the best way to increase those innings pitched numbers.

The Astros have many options for their starting staff. But do they have enough good options?