Astros place Josh James on Injured List, recall Cy Sneed

The Houston Astros lose yet another pitcher to the Injured List, putting Josh James on the 10-day IL and calling Cy Sneed back up to the Majors.

It doesn’t come very much as a surprise after the performance of Josh James on Sunday night. He obviously wasn’t himself and there was a significant drop in the velocity of his pitches. According to Jake Kaplan of The Athletic, Astros manager A. J. Hinch decided today to not take any chances and opted to place him on the 10-day Injured List, retroactive to Monday.

In the game against the Angels Sunday night, James came in for relief to start the 6th inning. Noticing his fastball was coming in at around 93 MPH, which usually averages just over 98, Hinch and coach Brent Strom came out to the mound for a visit after two outs. They decided to keep him in the game and he immediately surrendered a home run. That was it for the night for James.

The initial plan was to just give his arm a rest and see how things go. After James reported that he was still having a lingering soreness in his shoulder, Hinch didn’t want to take any chances and decided to shut him down. “We’re not going to mess around with any day-to-day stuff,” Hinch said.

The Astros do have two days off in the upcoming week, so hopefully, there won’t be too much of a burden put onto the bullpen. We are all aware of the workload they’ve been carrying lately with the shortage of starting pitchers.

They called up Cy Sneed this afternoon and he was on his way up right away. As Hinch mentioned, the proximity of Round Rock is a great advantage. “We’re lucky that we have Round Rock only a couple hours away”.

Sneed has appeared in two games for the Astros. His Major League debut was a little shaky giving up four runs on seven hits, in six innings of work. He settled down his second time out allowing only one run and striking out seven batters in five innings.