Josh Hader’s Astros comeback still looks promising despite rough rehab ending

The last two outings for Josh Hader on his rehab assignment before finally making his Houston Astros season debut haven’t been anywhere near what he wants, but that doesn’t mean the team isn’t ready to welcome him back. He’s on the doorstep of coming off the 60-day IL after dealing with biceps tendinitis. In the first seven outings, he allowed just one run and walked just one while striking out 11. Hitters looked lost against him. 

Hader needed 24 pitches to get through his full inning on Wednesday and then 22 to get the two outs on Thursday. That led to his final tuneup outings ending with 1.2 innings with five runs allowed on six hits and zero strikeouts. So the dominant rehab line was gone pretty quickly, which tempers expectations some. 

What the Josh Hader rehab numbers actually look like now

There are some concerns over Hader’s velocity. His sinker averaged 93.9 MPH in his four AAA rehab outings, which is down a fair amount from 95.5 MPH last season. Hader addressed his rehab velocity early in the process, saying that he felt it would tick up as he gets into more games later. It unfortunately hasn’t. And yet, there’s still hope. 

The easy answer is that Hader is one of the best in baseball and has been for the vast majority of his big league career. Guys who have been through the injuries Hader has typically need real game action, which includes adrenaline, lights, big league hitters, before the fastball plays up where it used to. The track record of velocity returning during big league outings after long layoffs is reasonably encouraging. 

There’s also a version of Hader that works even at reduced velocity. His sinker has never actually sunk all that much. It’s a flat-spin pitch that plays off his arm slot, the funky delivery, and the deception. A lot of what makes him impossible to hit comes from the angle, not the radar gun. And as long as he has his slider, he has a legitimate out pitch. He has a 46.7 percent whiff rate on the slider during his AAA outings, which is more than enough to get big league hitters out. 

Where it actually all works well for Houston is that the bullpen has stopped torching itself, which is a welcome sight. Bryan Abreu was terrible at first, but he’s been far better. When he was struggling, the Astros were openly weighing whether they’d even want him back next year, but he has gotten things back on track recently with a quiet pitch-mix tweak, leaning way less on a fastball that wasn’t getting outs. 

This matters for Hader’s return because they don’t need him to be the best version of himself. They need him to be a useful late-inning piece while the guys around them keep doing their jobs. Slot an 85-percent Hader in the ninth, push Abreu back into a setup role, and the bullpen suddenly looks close to what was expected in the winter. 

The back-to-back rough games on the rehab assignment isn’t what anyone in the organization wanted to see right before activation. In fact, it’s about the worst possible impression. There’s a non-zero chance he gets back to teh big leagues and the same thing happens against the best of the best and the Astros are paying far too much for a guy.

But they don’t have the luxury of waiting for perfect or for the velocity to magically reappear in Sugar Land. Houston is climbing back into a division race that left it behind a month ago, and the bullpen finally has functional pieces around the late innings. Even a diminished Hader, leaning more heavily on the slider, is a meaningful upgrade over the committee approach.

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