Astros confronting harsh Dana Brown reality after latest roster move

Dana Brown had a tough needle to thread trying to revamp a pitching staff that was losing a key horse in Framber Valdez and had many additional holes that needed to be filled, all without spending a lot of money. That resulted in the Houston Astros making a bunch of small-time gambles and one relatively large dart throw in Tatsuya Imai. With Nate Pearson's recent demotion on July 19, we can safely say that very few, if any, have worked out.

In addition to Pearson, Ryan Weiss, Roddery Muñoz, and Christian Roa have all been booted from the big league roster, and while the latter three all remain within the organization, it's safe to say that none of these gambles paid off.

This shouldn't be a total surprise. Pearson was a former first-round bust who signed a major league contract for just $1.35 million, while Weiss had spent five years toiling in the minor leagues with little success before heading off to the KBO and becoming a star. Unfortunately, that success wouldn't translate stateside. Throw in a Rule 5 pick in Muñoz and a minor league free agent in Roa, and you can see that the ceiling wasn't all that high for this quartet.

What remains are the bigger swings Brown took, but they've been no more reliable than their under-the-radar counterparts. Mike Burrows was on the verge of a demotion before an elbow injury came to light, throwing Houston's much-maligned training staff in the spotlight again. Imai will show a flash of brilliance every once in a while, but ultimately can't find the strike zone consistently and gets shelled when he does.

Peter Lambert has been the Astros' most consistent starter, which is stunning considering he was an afterthought as a minor league free agent signing, and Kai-Wei Teng has had his moments, though he ran out of gas as a starter.

It was always going to be hard to expect much success from so many rolls of the dice, but even so, Brown's hit rate has been abysmal.

It's hard to trust Dana Brown to fix the Astros' broken pitching staff at the trade deadline

After an 8-5 victory on July 20 that featured an encouraging first start following Tommy John surgery from Ronel Blanco, Houston's team ERA still sits at 4.77, ranking 26th in the majors. Hayden Wesneski will join Blanco as a reinforcement in the rotation sooner rather than later, but more will still be needed.

The bullpen also will need help, especially in light of Bryan King's demotion. Once again, pitching is at the forefront of the Astros' needs.

Brown believes that the club's main need is a left-handed-hitting outfielder, and while he's right about that being a sore spot, one could argue that fixing the pitching staff should be a bigger priority.

If Brown follows through with his plan, then we'll be looking once again at Houston bringing in dart throws and redemption candidates on the mound since the sorry state of the farm system isn't going to allow the team to make multiple high-end additions, especially in this heavy seller's market.

His shaky-at-best track record hitting on these kinds of arms doesn't inspire much faith that he'll be able to pull this off, and it feels like he's once again setting the Astros up for disappointment. We'd like to see him prioritize pitching first, but barring a last-minute change of course, it looks like he hasn't learned his lesson.

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