Latest Astros injury has 2026 on track to reach all-time heights of bad luck for franchise

Sign a guy off the scrap heap to patch a hole, watch him rake for four games, then watch him pull up lame jogging into second on a routine double. If you want the best way to describe the 2026 Houston Astros season, that’s it. Lamonte Wade Jr. opted out of a deal with the White Sox to sign with the Astros and then hit the ground running.

He went 4-12 with a home run and two doubles and looked a whole lot more like the guy who hit well for the Giants in 2023 and 2024 than the one who was terrible last season. And now he’s on the 10-day IL with a right hamstring strain. The corresponding move was to bring Joey Loperfido back, who was on the IL with an injury of his own. You almost have to laugh.

Astros' injuries in 2026 keep stacking toward franchise-worst luck

At some point, the volume stops reading like a typical injury list and starts looking like a bit of a curse. Houston has had double-digit players on the IL at the same time this year, almost the entire season. Carlos Correa is done for the year. Ronel Blanco and Hayden Wesneski have all been rehabbing from Tommy John. Hunter Brown is getting close, but hasn’t thrown a meaningful pitch in two months. Cristian Javier got hurt right after Brown. Josh Hader has missed most of the season. Jose Altuve was hurt. Lance McCullers Jr. was hurt, though that was probably something they had planned for.

The rotation ERA has lived in the basement of the league for basically the whole season, which is what happens when you're handing the ball to your eighth and ninth options in May. And the Wade injury is almost too on the nose; a four-game cameo from a depth signing, snuffed out by a hamstring on a double he'll never remember legging out. That’s the baseball gods just running up the score on the Astros.

This certainly isn't as bad as it's ever been. They're floundering and it's frustrating to watch, but it's certainly not 2013 bad at least.

The franchise's worst-luck, worst-everything seasons are still the rebuild years: 51-111 in 2013, 55-107 in 2012, 56-106 in 2011. Those teams were tearing it down to the studs on purpose, flipping Hunter Pence and Michael Bourn for lottery tickets, losing 100-plus three years in a row by design. A 31-39 pace projects to roughly 72 wins. Heck, it's barely worse than the 2024 club, which sat 33-40 in mid-June and went on to win the division.

But while the record isn’t historic, the injuries might be. This is a team that was built to contend, but is currently spending more time on the trainer’s table than the batter’s box or the pitcher’s mound. It’s not a roster that’s necessarily bad on its merits, but it's bad because they simply can’t get on the field.

The honest comparison isn’t from when they tanked a decade ago. It’s the team that took the field just last season. The 2025 Astros were absolutely gutted by injuries on their way to an 87-75 finish that left them out of the playoffs by way of a tiebreaker. Seven different pitchers spent time on the IL. They used 15 different starting pitchers. Only two pitchers - Brown and Framber Valdez - cleared 100 innings. Hader got hurt. We mentioned the pitchers recovering from Tommy John. Yordan Alvarez only played 48 games. Isaac Paredes tore his hamstring. It was the most disappointing Astros season in a decade, and it was all about injuries.

So what did they do? They looked at what happened and blamed the medical staff, which isn’t necessarily the worst conclusion. So they shuffled the training staff over the winter, moving on from head athletic trainer Jeremian Randall along the way. The point was to stop it from happening again. And then it’s happened again. 

When the fix-it season turns out worse than the season you were trying to fix, simply chalking this up to “bad luck” feels like a big understatement. 

The good news is the cavalry appears to finally be on the way. Brown looks like he should be back very soon after a good run of rehab starts with his velocity all the way back. Hader is already back and closing games. Others are circling. And the American League West has waited around for the Astros to get healthy. Sure, they’re 31-39 heading into the weekend in Kansas City, but they’re also only five back of first place and four back of the third Wild Card.

That doesn’t change what’s happened so far. It’s been a gut-punch season. The injuries have been relentless, the depth has been tested well past its breaking point, and the newest name has been with the team for all of about 12 minutes. If 2026 ends up being remembered in any way, it’ll likely be for the injuries, not the win total. That’s the spot they really are chasing franchise history.

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