Astros: Jose Altuve is Back and Pedro Baez to 60-Day IL

 Second Baseman Jose Altuve has been cleared to play tonight against Seattle.

Jake Kaplan of The Athletic broke the news of the many moves the Houston Astros have made today, especially the return of Jose Altuve from the COVID-19 injured list. It was recently revealed that Altuve had contracted COVID-19, and that’s why he had been on the IL since April 14, missing 10 games.

Having Altuve back in the lineup gets the Astros offense back to full strength and it should be a lot of fun watching these guys play the next few games. It’ll take Altuve a few at bats to get back into the swing of things, but once he’s ready, I think this offense will be back to normal, mashing home runs and driving in runs, left and right. We’ve already seen what they can do without him so, imagine things with Altuve in the lineup.

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In other news, according to Danielle Lerner of the Houston Chronicle,  Pedro Baez has been moved from the 10-day IL to the 60-day IL. Baez has yet to play for the Astros this season after signing a two year contract with the team earlier this year and it’s yet another setback for him. He contracted COVID-19 earlier in the year and has been dealing with shoulder soreness.

Losing Baez hurts the Astros in the fact that they are losing another pitcher and have yet to see him play to see what he can bring to the ball club. While Baez’s numbers with the Dodgers were not anything to write home about, we all know what kind of magic Astros’ pitching coach Brent Strom can do to help a pitcher out and turn his career around. Baez just needs to get healthy first.

For now, our core lineup is healthy and back, which is music to every Astros fans ears right now and hopefully our pitching situation will get solved sooner rather than later.