Well, the Houston Astros were never going to go 162-0, but a run yesterday would have been nice. The team also won’t go 0-162, so maybe that run comes tonight. Ideally, more than one, but I don’t want to get greedy.
It’s easy to get down after an season opener where the Astros offense didn’t look competitive against an underwhelming Angels squad nobody, but there’s still a lot to look forward to.
Mike Burrows is one of those things. The pitcher with the highest spin rate at the 2022 MLB Future game, Burrows was obtained from the Pirates in a 3-way trade with the Rays that sent prospect Jacob Melton away. Burrows has looked outstanding in spring training, a potential top of the rotation arm. Across 18 innings in 5 spring starts, Burrows allowed just 3 earned runs, and struck out 17, while walking 6.
Good in Spring Training is one thing though. Good when the games count is another, but there’s no reason why his electric spring shouldn’t continue. In the 2025 regular season for the Pirates, Burrows had a K/9 of 9.1 with a BB/9 of 2.9, roughly the same numbers he posted across his impressive 18 innings this spring.
Burrows will be called on to shoulder a much heavier workload than the 95 innings he pitched last year for Pittsburgh. If the 2026 Astros are to succeed, they’re going to need to do it relying on their starting rotation. Burrows needs to emerge as a #2 or high end #3, and log north of 160 innings this year.
Old friend Yusei Kikuchi takes the mound for the Angels. A superb lefty, the Astros face another challenge, even with their righty heavy lineup.
It begins with getting that first run of the year.
Jeremy Pena makes his first start of the year after sitting out the season opener. Brice Matthews also makes his season debut and in center field.
Tonight’s Angels – Astros matchup will be available on Apple TV Friday Night Baseball at 7:15 PM CT.
Visually and aesthetically, I have always found Apple TV’s broadcasts to be the crispest looking presentation out there. Their national broadcast announcing team has met mixed reviews though, so here’s a little hack: You can change the audio to that of the Astros’ radio broadcast and it should be perfectly synced up. Robert Ford is one of the best in the business, so I highly recommend it.
On another note, I’d like to add that while the Astros didn’t show up for the home opener, the Launch Angle community definitely did. The gamethread on the TLA Discord Server had 27 participants yesterday, and totaled over 1000 comments! Astros fans celebrated celebrated Brown’s strikeouts together while lamenting how quickly his pitch count was being driven up. We marveled at AJ Blubaugh being a stud on the mound, until Mike Trout pulled the brakes on the Blubaugh dream train.
Join us again for today’s game. Just join the Discord server using this link: https://discord.gg/f6Jvrm8HV. Chat, lurk, do whatever! (But please say “hi”, so we know you’re not a bot.)
Feature photo from @astros on X, Source Link.
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