Grae Kessinger Sidelined By “Significant” Hamstring Injury
Mets infielder Grae Kessinger is dealing with what manager Carlos Mendoza described as “a pretty significant injury” to his hamstring, as relayed by Mark Feinsand of MLB.com. Feinsand adds that Mendoza indicated surgery is “on the table” for Kessinger and that his recovery timeline will be at least eight to twelve weeks.
The news is a tough blow for Kessinger, who previously missed nearly all of the 2025 season due to injury. He made his big league debut with the Astros back in 2023 but was designated for assignment by the club shortly after the 2024 campaign. He was plucked off waivers by the Diamondbacks but appeared in just 11 games at Triple-A for the club due to his injury before eventually being released. He did not sign with a new club as he rehabbed that undisclosed injury, but he caught on with the Mets on a minor league deal back in January.
Kessinger was firmly in the mix to be the Mets’ utility infielder off the bench headed into the 2026 campaign. Unfortunately, that won’t be in the cards for him due to this latest injury. The 28-year-old has just 48 games at the big league level under his belt to this point in his career, all of which came as a member of the Astros. It’s difficult to draw conclusions regarding his overall ability from his lifetime .131/.243/.213 slash line at the major league level given that he’s gotten all of 70 plate appearances in the majors spread across two seasons, but a lifetime .268/.370/.400 slash line at Triple-A would certainly indicate that he has a chance to be a passable utility player in the majors.
More details on the specifics of Kessinger’s timeline figure to become available once it’s known whether or not he’ll need to go under the knife or if he can rehab the injury. If he does avoid surgery, the timeline Mendoza mentioned indicates that he could be back in play as a depth option around Memorial Day. In the meantime, other players in the organization will get a shot at backing up the team’s incumbent infielders. With Francisco Lindor, Jorge Polanco, Marcus Semien, Bo Bichette, and Brett Baty all set to start regularly between the four infield spots and DH, the utility infield job on the Mets’ bench could wind up coming with a fairly small amount of playing time available.
Still, a big league gig is coveted for any young player or minor league veteran, and the players who figure to battle for the position this spring now that Kessinger is out of commission include other non-roster invitees like Vidal Brujan, Jackson Cluff, and Christian Arroyo. Youngster Ronny Mauricio arguably has a leg up on all of those names given the fact that he’s already on the 40-man roster, but it should be considered that the aforementioned lack of playing time available in the role might make the Mets prefer to play Mauricio regularly at Triple-A. In that case, one of the aforementioned bench pieces seems likely to land the job, with Brujan perhaps being the favorite given his versatility and experience in the outfield.
Thomas White Suffers Oblique Strain
Left-handed pitching prospect Thomas White is dealing with a grade one strain of his right oblique that will preclude him from appearing in further Spring Training games, according to a report from Christina De Nicola of MLB.com. Louis Addeo-Weiss of Fish On First added that, according to manager Clayton McCullough, White felt some discomfort during his spring debut and is facing a three to four week timeline before he can return to the mound.
It’s a disappointing setback for the 21-year-old, who was a first-round pick by the Marlins in the 2023 draft and in the years since then has risen to become one of the very best pitching prospects in the entire sport. After a strong season in the lower minors in 2024, White impressed in a big way across 21 starts during the 2025 campaign. He pitched well at High-A to open the season and quickly earned a promotion to Double-A, where he was utterly dominant with a 1.59 ERA in 45 1/3 innings of work across ten starts. He struck out a sensational 39.3% of his opponents against a 12.6% walk rate, leaving him with elite peripherals (2.24 FIP, 2.54 xFIP) to go with his impressive run prevention numbers.
That performance at Double-A earned White a brief look at Triple-A near the end of the season as well as an invite to big league camp this spring. White struggled in his spring debut, as he surrendered two runs on two hits and a walk while striking out just one in his lone inning of work. That performance was surely hampered by the oblique strain he’s now known to have been dealing with during that outing, and he’ll spend the rest of Spring Training focused on rehabbing that issue in hopes of being healthy not long after minor league games begin. While White was in camp with the Marlins, he never had an especially strong chance of cracking the Opening Day roster given that Sandy Alcantara, Eury Perez, Max Meyer, Braxton Garrett, Chris Paddack, and Janson Junk at minimum are each ahead of him on the depth chart on the moment.
That will surely change at some point this season, provided White can stay healthy and build on last season. His two starts at Triple-A last year were a mixed bag; while he struck out an absurd 42.5% of his opponents at the level, he also walked an untenable 25%. Significant conclusions can’t be drawn from a sample size of less than two innings, of course, but White walked 13.6% of his opponents overall in the minors last year and will surely need to tighten up his control at least somewhat before he can break into the majors and fulfill his promise as a potential future front-of-the-rotation arm for the Marlins.
Throughout the season, White figures to be joined in the Triple-A rotation by fellow top prospect Robby Snelling, who split last year between Double- and Triple-A and also figures to be on the big league radar at some point this year. White and Snelling currently looked blocked in Miami at least on paper, but offseason trades of Edward Cabrera and Ryan Weathers helped to clear the deck for them somewhat, and the checkered injury histories of Garrett, Perez, and even Alcantara suggest that innings should be available for them once they’re ready to take the next step into the majors.
Cardinals Extend Oli Marmol
The Cardinals and manager Oli Marmol have agreed to a two-year contract extension, according to a report from Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Marmol was entering the final year of his contract in 2026 but now figures to remain in St. Louis for the 2027 and ’28 seasons, with a club option for 2029. The Cardinals have subsequently announced Marmol’s new deal.
It’s the second extension Marmol has signed with the Cardinals. The 39-year-old initially took over as manager in St. Louis following Mike Shildt’s dismissal in October of 2021. Marmol’s first season as manager saw the Cardinals romp to a division title with a 93-win season thanks primarily to MVP-caliber performances from both Paul Goldschmidt (who won the award in the NL) and Nolan Arenado (who finished third). Unfortunately, the Cardinals were delivered a quick exit by the Phillies in the Wild Card round that year and went home that October without winning a single playoff game.
The end of the 2022 campaign also marked the end of longtime franchise face Yadier Molina‘s playing career, and Molina’s departure ushered in a transitory period in Cardinals baseball. While the club added an impactful bat behind the plate in Willson Contreras, pitchers in St. Louis struggled to adapt to life after the nine-time Gold Glover they had grown accustomed to working with. Meanwhile, both Goldschmidt and Arenado regressed in a big way, and injuries to key players like Brendan Donovan and Tyler O’Neill left the Cardinals to tumble from the top of the NL Central all the way to the bottom with a 91-loss campaign. In the years since, the Cards haven’t done much better. 2024 saw the franchise get just barely back over .500 with an 83-79 record that left them tied for second place in the NL Central standings, but the team fell right back below .500 in 2025.
Difficult as Marmol’s tenure in St. Louis has been, management and ownership clearly do not lay the organization’s struggles at his feet. They signed him to a two-year extension prior to the 2024 campaign, the last year of which he’ll manage the team on this year, and even after John Mozeliak retired and new president of baseball operations Chaim Bloom took over, both Bloom and team ownership have expressed confidence in Marmol in the run-up to today’s extension.
It’s understandable why the team would choose to stick with Marmol despite a lack of on-field success. The Cardinals have saddled Marmol with a stagnant and aging roster for the majority of his time with the organization. Outside of deals for Contreras and Sonny Gray (both of whom were traded to the Red Sox this past offseason), St. Louis has made relatively minimal efforts to improve the roster via trades and free agency in recent years, instead banking on internal developments that haven’t come to fruition. That lack of internal development has been attributed to the organization by the team’s decision to reallocate funds that once were used for player development into fortifying the big league payroll, and over the past two years the team has started to move towards a rebuilding phase where they plan to scale back payroll and return their focus towards player development.
Given the current state of the organization, it’s understandable that the Cardinals would look to keep someone they had enough confidence in to install as MLB’s youngest manager at the time of his hire. Now headed into his fifth season as a big league manager (with a decade of coaching experience prior to that), Marmol now has plenty of experience handling young players and veterans alike and his work with last year’s Cardinals team, which lacked the win-now expectations that most seasons in St. Louis come with, will surely prove informative for the difficult task of rebuilding into a contender that the organization now faces.
Royals Sign Starling Marte
Starling Marte and the Royals have agreed to a one-year, Major League contract. Financial term of the agreement aren’t yet known. The deal will be finalized once Marte passes a physical, and the Royals will have to make another transaction to clear space on their 40-man roster for the Klutch Sports client.
2025 was the last season of Marte’s four-year, $78MM contract with the Mets, and while Marte was hopeful of playing for multiple more years, there hadn’t been any public buzz about his free agent market over the winter. Now, the 37-year-old has landed with a Kansas City club whose interest in the former two-time All-Star dates back to last winter, when the Royals had some talks with the Mets about a possible trade.
Marte’s tenure in New York was defined by injuries, as he played in only 396 games during his four-year stint. Groin problems were the source of most of Marte’s issues, as surgery on both his left and right groin muscles following the 2022 season didn’t entirely correct the problem, as the injury resurfaced in 2023. Marte also missed time due to a neck strain, migraines, and a bone bruise in his right knee, and the Mets responded to Marte’s lower-body injuries by making him essentially a full-time DH in 2025.
Marte still made 12 appearances in the outfield last year, and given the Royals’ need for outfield help, Kansas City could consider giving him slightly more time on the grass in 2026. After acquiring both the switch-hitting Isaac Collins and the right-handed hitting Lane Thomas this winter, the Royals’ primary outfield looks like Collins in left field, defensive specialist Kyle Isbel in center, and Thomas and lefty-swinging Jac Caglianone perhaps in a platoon situation in right field. Salvador Perez and top prospect Carter Jensen will handle the catching duties, and whomever isn’t behind the plate will likely get plenty of DH at-bats.
It would add up to another part-time role for Marte, though there’s value in having a veteran bat on the roster. Caglianone struggled badly in his first exposure to big league pitching in 2025, and Thomas is coming off essentially a lost year due to injuries in 2025. Thomas’ top season was his 28-homer campaign with the Nationals in 2023, but he has posted just a 98 wRC+ over 1900 plate appearances over the last four seasons. Collins is also far from a sure thing, as his impressive 2025 rookie season with the Brewers came despite some hard-contact issues that were perhaps obscured by a .326 BABIP.
Marte hasn’t looked like a true top-tier hitter since 2022, but he still managed a respectable .269/.331/.398 slash line and 16 homers over 699 PA during the 2024-25 seasons, translating to a 108 wRC+. Marte is still making hard contact at an above-average rate, even if his power (and his Statcast metrics on the whole) have fallen off.
Whether or not Marte can maintain even this decent production into his 15th Major League season remains to be seen, of course. It can be argued that Collins, Thomas, and Marte couldn’t help but be upgrades for K.C. given how little the Royals have gotten from their outfield mix in the last few years, plus Caglianone is still a highly-touted prospect with breakout potential.
Marte’s next contract will surely be worth only a few million dollars in guaranteed money, with probably some bonus clauses built in based on plate appearances. The Royals’ payroll currently sits at around $149.2MM (as per RosterResource‘s estimates), which represents a modest increase over their $139.8MM figure from 2025. This tracks with owner John Sherman’s comments from October about the payroll likely staying in the same general range, which naturally left the front office a little limited in what they could do in pursuing needed lineup help.
Reporter Yancen Pujols first broke the news that Marte and the Royals were in contract talks. MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand (multiple links) reported that the deal was in place, and that Marte had inked a guaranteed contract.
NL West Notes: Devers, Bader, Song
The Giants are banged up this spring. The club released a handful of injury updates regarding a few notable names on Saturday. The highest-profile player on the list was Rafael Devers, who is dealing with a left hamstring injury. The slugger will be sidelined for the next two to four days, as relayed by multiple reporters, including Maria Guardado of MLB.com.
Devers has suited up for three Spring Training games so far. He last played on Thursday against the Rockies. Every Devers appearance this spring has been at first base. The position was a point of contention with his former team, but he’ll head into his first full season with San Francisco as the top option at the cold corner.
Harrison Bader will not hit for the next two days as he recovers from a right thumb contusion. The outfielder was pulled from Friday’s game after one at-bat due to the injury. Assuming a return to full health, Bader will lock down center field for the Giants.
Drew Gilbert is working through a left shoulder impingement. The issue will keep him from throwing for the next five to seven days. Gilbert’s absence could impact the race for the fourth outfielder spot. Luis Matos has spent decent stints with the Giants in each of the past three seasons, but he’s being pressed for a bench spot by Gilbert, Will Brennan, and non-roster invitee Jared Oliva, to name a few.
In the bullpen, Erik Miller and Joel Peguero are both progressing well. Miller is dealing with lower back tightness. He’s throwing from flat ground for now, with the expectation he’ll get back on the mound in a few days. Peguero is battling hamstring tightness. He completed a live bullpen and is expected to get back into Spring Training games next week.
Elsewhere around the division, the Padres are looking to expand Sung-Mun Song‘s versatility. The infielder played first base, second base, and third base during his nine-year KBO career. San Diego is expected to begin working him out at shortstop and in left field, per AJ Cassavell of MLB.com. Despite never playing either position as a professional, the Padres are confident Song will pick them up quickly. “We’ve just got to get him on the practice field doing those things,” Stammen said. “And then we can put him in a game.”
San Diego doesn’t have an obvious spot in the lineup for Song, so getting him comfortable at several spots will help him contribute in multiple areas. The 29-year-old is coming off two stellar seasons in KBO, including a 25/25 campaign with a 151 wRC+ this past year.
Photo courtesy of Rick Scuteri, Imagn Images
Narrowing Down The Closer Options In Texas
The Rangers and White Sox were the only teams in the league last season that failed to have a reliever record double-digit saves. Jhoan Duran and David Bednar each did it with two different teams. The 43-win Rockies had multiple pitchers lock down 10+ games.
Texas finished the year tied for 22nd in saves with the Nationals, who also had two relievers reach the double-digit threshold. Luke Jackson, Shawn Armstrong, and Robert Garcia had a three-way tie for the Rangers team lead at nine saves. Phil Maton chipped in three, while Chris Martin had two.
Jackson, Armstrong, and Maton have moved on to other organizations. Martin is back with the club, embarking on his age-40 season. Garcia remains a key piece of the late-inning equation, though the club is sorely lacking in high-leverage lefties. Here’s a quick look at how the closer role could shake out in Texas…
Robert Garcia
The case against Garcia has nothing to do with his skills. He posted a sub-3.00 ERA with more than a strikeout per inning in his first year with the club. Garcia notched 15 holds in addition to his nine saves. The Rangers’ acquisition of Garcia from the Nationals for Nathaniel Lowe, who landed in Cincinnati on a minor league deal this offseason, seems like a clear win.
The problem for Garcia is the lack of other lefties in the ‘pen. Tyler Alexander is the only healthy left-hander on the 40-man roster who will definitely be filling a relief role. He comes to Texas after four straight seasons with a 4.50 ERA or worse. Jacob Latz is a candidate for the rotation. If he comes up short for the No. 5 spot, he’ll likely be in a flexible multi-inning role.
Garcia is the lone holdover from the 2025 closer trio, but he had that role under former manager Bruce Bochy. Skip Schumaker is at the helm now. The new skipper had a lefty closer in Tanner Scott during his two seasons with the Marlins, but those teams also had A.J. Puk, Andrew Nardi, and Steven Okert as left-handed options.
Chris Martin
The veteran right-hander’s career has seemed over multiple times recently. He said at the close of the 2024 campaign that he was 95% sure that 2025 would be it for him. Then this past season included three different injuries, punctuated by a chilling diagnosis of thoracic outlet syndrome. And yet, Martin is back with the Rangers on a one-year deal.
The soon-to-be 40-year-old has been a solid reliever for much of his career, but it’s hard to know how many innings he can handle at this point. It’s also difficult to gauge how the Rangers will treat him. It was pedal to the metal to begin 2025, as Martin pitched in all three games of the first series against Boston. It’d be surprising to see him used anywhere near that frequently this year.
This is by far the most intriguing name on the list, given his past run as a solid closer and his more recent history as a struggling minor-league reliever. Diaz dominated in his 2022 debut with the Reds, firing 63 2/3 innings of a 1.84 ERA and a 32.5% strikeout rate. He picked up 10 saves as a rookie. He would go on to rack up 65 saves over the next two seasons.
Diaz missed the start of last season with a hamstring strain. He was crushed for eight earned runs over six innings once he returned, and found himself back in Triple-A. Cincinnati would deal him to the Dodgers at the end of May. Diaz continued to scuffle in L.A. and was even worse after latching on with the Braves to close the year. If he can find a way to regain a couple of ticks on his fastball, Diaz could push for high-leverage opportunities.
It’s been a long journey to the big leagues for the 2018 first-round pick, but the converted starter was a significant contributor in the bullpen last season. The majority of Winn’s work came in the middle innings, but he did pick up four holds. The right-hander posted a pristine 1.51 ERA. He deserves some credit for that mark, though the underlying numbers point to regression. Winn had a .194 BABIP and a 90.5% LOB%. His xERA and xFIP were both over 4.00.
While he probably won’t put up a sub-2.00 ERA again, Winn does have the stuff of a high-leverage arm. He sits above 96 mph with the four-seamer, while boasting a pair of strong swing-and-miss pitches. Winn’s slider had a 34% whiff rate, and his splitter had a hefty 43.3% mark. It’s odd to see a short reliever throw five different pitches at least 12% of the time, but the arsenal is viable.
Carter Baumler (honorable mention)
The Rule 5 pick has been turning heads in camp. Baumler has an upper-90s heater with a hard slider and a big curveball. Schumaker described the arsenal as “stuff that we don’t really have in the mix of the potential bullpen construction,” relayed by Shawn McFarland of the Dallas Morning News. Baumler has never made it above Double-A, so it’s hard to imagine him stepping into a late-inning role. His first goal will be just making the team. Baumler is well on his way to earning a roster spot with three strikeouts across two scoreless innings in Spring Training.
Photo courtesy of Matt Kartozian, Imagn Images
Red Sox Notes: Anthony, Casas, Crawford
Red Sox fans shielded their eyes on Friday when outfielders Roman Anthony and Ceddanne Rafaela slammed into each other during a Spring Training game against the Braves. Fortunately, both players avoided serious injury, reports Tim Healey of MassLive.com. “[Anthony is a] really big guy,” Rafaela said. “Hits hard too … I just was hoping he’s OK. I was more worried about him than I was about me, because I saw him in some pain, and I don’t like seeing my teammates in those types of situations.”
Latest On The Phillies’ Pitching Pursuits
The Phillies have long been known to be keeping an eye out for starting pitching depth in order to fortify their rotation, particularly given that Zack Wheeler is expected to open the year on the injured list. President of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski spoke to reporters (including Todd Zolecki of MLB.com) earlier today about the team’s pursuits, and Zolecki reports that despite the team’s desire for pitching help, they were not involved in the market for future Hall of Famer Max Scherzer before he returned to the Blue Jays on a one-year, $3MM guarantee. Dombrowski went on to indicate that the remaining top starts available, Lucas Giolito and Zack Littell, are “not a fit” for what the Phillies are looking for either.
That might seem like a surprise on the surface, but it’s fairly understandable. All three hurlers are major league quality starters who figure to have the expectation of getting the opportunity to make a full slate of starts, health permitting. That’s not something the Phillies can offer, given that any addition would come in behind at minimum Wheeler, Jesus Luzardo, Cristopher Sanchez, and Aaron Nola on the team’s depth chart. That theoretically leaves one spot open at the back of the rotation even when Wheeler is healthy, but the team has not made it a secret that they hope to give Andrew Painter a significant opportunity in the rotation this year, perhaps as soon as Opening Day. If the rest of the rotation is healthy and another regular was added to the mix, pushing Painter in would either force the club to go to a six-man rotation or demote someone to the bullpen.
Given that, it’s perhaps not too surprising that Dombrowski indicated players like Giolito, Littell, and Scherzer aren’t fits for what they’re looking for. There’s a number of veterans left who seem likely to have to settle for minor league deals such as Patrick Corbin, Tyler Anderson, and Marcus Stroman, but outside of that group the pickings are rather slim. Even if one of those players were open to joining Philadelphia, it might not be an ideal fit. Dombrowski highlighted in his comments to Zolecki that the club’s preference is to add arms that can be optioned to the minors, given that Wheeler could return from the injured list as soon as early April.
It’s not impossible to find optionable starters on the free agent market, as shown by the teams recent minor league deal with right-hander Connor Gillispie. Dombrowski’s comments about their continued search for pitching came after the Gillispie deal, however, suggesting the team is still on the hunt for more talent. That’s not exactly a shock, given that Gillispie has just 34 big league innings under his belt and struggled badly in six starts with the Marlins last year. Fringe big leaguers like Gillispie are par for the course when it comes to free agents available who can still be optioned to the minors, however, and that makes it easy to understand why Dombrowski has indicated in his previous comments that he’s interested in swinging a trade for rotation depth.
Looking around the league, there’s certainly a handful of teams with an excess of optionable starters who could fit the Phillies needs. The Cubs (Javier Assad), Dodgers (Landon Knack), Tigers (Keider Montero) and Giants (Hayden Birdsong) are among the teams with optionable starters who have notable big league experience but are likely to be squeezed out of the club’s rotation entering the year. It’s not easy to get clubs to part with optionable rotation depth given the value of that resource, but if the Phillies are sufficiently motivated those teams could be better equipped to part with the sort of arm Dombrowski seems to be looking for than most. Failing that sort of trade, a non-roster invitee to Spring Training like Bryse Wilson, Tucker Davidson, or perhaps Gillispie (if he received a big league camp invite as part of his deal) seems likely to be where the Phillies turn as they look to give Painter competition for the vacant Opening Day rotation job.
Marlins Notes: Stowers, Arquette, Pauley
The Marlins had a bit of an injury scare regarding star outfielder Kyle Stowers today, as he was scratched from his scheduled appearance in the Miami lineup today due to hamstring tightness. As noted by Christina De Nicola of MLB.com, manager Clayton McCullough told reporters this afternoon that imaging on Stowers had revealed a “very minor” strain in his right hamstring.
While hamstring strains can often be serious issues, with even relatively minor strains costing players upwards of a month, it seems Stowers’s strain was caught early enough that it shouldn’t be a major problem for him. McCullough indicated that Stowers will be sidelined for just a week or two before returning to game action, and that he could resume taking at-bats outside of games within the next few days. That’s great news for the Marlins given that Stowers is their best and most established hitter on the roster at the moment. The 2025 All Star is coming off a rookie campaign where he slashed an excellent .288/.368/.544 with 25 homers and 21 doubles in 117 games.
If the Marlins are going to build on their third-place finish in the NL East last year and push back over .500 for the first time since their surprise postseason appearance back in 2023, they’ll need Stowers to be healthy and firing on all cylinders. With Opening Day now just a month away, it would be understandable for Miami to be cautious with Stowers as they bring him back into game action over the coming weeks. If Stowers suffers a setback or his hamstring is re-aggravated once he begins ramping back up, that could put his availability for the start of the season in danger. Youngsters Jakob Marsee and Owen Caissie currently figure to handle center field and right field for the Marlins, respectively, but a more serious injury to Stowers could open the door for some combination of Griffin Conine, Javier Sanoja, Christopher Morel, and Esteury Ruiz to get looks in his absence.
Looking elsewhere on the Marlins’ roster, De Nicola also reports that top Marlins prospect Aiva Arquette underwent core muscle surgery recently and is facing a four to six week recovery period before he can resume baseball activities. Arquette reportedly suffered a left groin strain during his offseason workouts, and while he stopped activities and focused on recovery from there his arrival in camp came with renewed discomfort and prompted the procedure. A consensus top-50 prospect in the sport, Arquette was Miami’s first-round pick (seventh overall) in the 2025 draft. He scuffled a bit in his first 27 games as a professional last year at the High-A level, but the 22-year-old figures to spend much of the year at Double-A once he’s ready to return to action and could be on the radar for a big league debut sometime next year.
Elsewhere on the infield, MLB.com notes that Graham Pauley has begun working his way back after being shut down due to forearm tightness earlier this week. Pauley is slated to throw to 90 feet and take live at-bats today, and is slated to serve as the team’s DH in tomorrow’s Spring Training game against the Nationals. Assuming those first steps go well, it stands to reason that Pauley could be back to regular work at some point next week. Pauley hit just .224/.311/.366 in 64 games for the Marlins last year, but his left-handed bat and solid defense at third base could still earn him some work around the infield against tough right-handed pitchers throughout the year given that switch hitter Xavier Edwards is the only other infielder on the projected roster that doesn’t bat right handed.
Josh Hader Still Uncertain For Astros’ Opening Day Roster
A bout of biceps inflammation in late January set Josh Hader back in his offseason prep, and has continued to limit the Astros closer during Spring Training. Hader’s throwing has been limited to games of catch, and Astros manager Joe Espada told reporters (including the Houston Chronicle’s Matt Kawahara) that Hader would continue on this route through the week.
Espada didn’t provide any clarity on when Hader might start to increase his throwing progression, or whether or not the left-hander might not be available for Opening Day. “I think we still have a little bit more time. Once we start getting down to that we’ll talk more on that, but right now it’s still premature just to see where we’re at by March 26,” Espada said.
Because Hader is a relief pitcher built for a limited workload, he naturally doesn’t require as much ramp-up as a starter. In each of the last three years, however, Hader has made at least six appearances in Spring Training games, and matching that number may be difficult given that we’re less than a month away from Houston’s first regular-season contest.
The biceps injury comes on the heels of a more serious injury setback for Hader, as a left capsule sprain prematurely ended his season last August. Surgery wasn’t required, and after completing a throwing program in November, Hader said that he expected to be ready for Spring Training. That might have well been the case, if it wasn’t for the biceps inflammation that again put Hader on the sidelines.
Bryan Abreu covered the majority of save chances when Hader was on the injured list last season, so Abreu would probably be Houston’s top choice as interim closer if Hader needs a 15-day IL stint to begin the 2026 campaign. While Abreu has more than proven himself capable of high-leverage work, obviously removing a star closer like Hader from the equation weakens the bullpen depth chart as a whole.
If Hader is absent, it will put more of a spotlight on the rest of the Astros’ relief corps, from both a quality and health perspective. To the latter point, Enyel De Los Santos has started throwing again and Espada said the right-hander should start working off the mound by next week.
De Los Santos picked up a right knee strain early in camp, but it appears as though the strain ended up being fairly minor. The missed time in camp may not have much impact on De Los Santos’ availability for Opening Day, as Espada said that since De Los Santos pitched in winter ball, the righty might be able to rebuild his arm strength in fairly short order.
De Los Santos signed with Houston last August and pitched pretty well down the stretch, posting a 4.03 ERA, 6.6% walk rate, and 26.4% strikeout rate over 22 1/3 innings in an Astros uniform. He avoided arbitration with the Astros by agreeing to a one-year, $1.6MM deal for the 2026 season, giving the 30-year-old a bit of stability after already playing for eight different teams over the course of his seven MLB seasons.