Houston Astros: Rotation fully healthy for first time this season

The Houston Astros are getting back Dallas Keuchel tomorrow evening, a former Cy Young award winner who, prior to his injury, had a 9-0 record with a 1.67 ERA. While the Astros are on the prowl for another starting pitcher or reliever, it’s incredible how far they’ve come over the past month and a half without their best pitcher.

And now the Houston Astros get what would be the equivalent of a mid-season trade for a pitcher who was dominating the 2017 Cy Young race before being placed on the disabled list with neck discomfort. But the Astros waited out the storm and now their rotation is finally in tact for the first time this year.

You hear that? That was the rest of the American League going “Uh-oh.” Not that it should matter to them of course as the Astros have an 11.5 game lead on the next best team in the AL (The Cleveland Indians.) Maybe if the Astros had a single digit lead it would seem plausible to catch them.

But now the addition of Keuchel just makes the best team in the league better (unnecessarily so for the regular season) and we get to see what this rotation can do at full strength. If there’s one downside to Keuchel’s return it’s that now Brad Peacock, the man who served not only as the band-aid but the antiseptic that kept this team going with Keuchel-like performances when the rotation was in dire straits, moves to the bullpen.

You could make the argument to send Mike Fiers instead with how incredible Peacock has pitched. But the manager will always defer to the veteran and Fiers has certainly pitched well enough to keep his spot in the rotation. The gang is finally together though. Dallas Keuchel, Lance McCullers Jr., Colin McHugh, Charlie Morton, and Mike Fiers.

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The best part about Keuchel’s return (other than just making the team even more incredibly spectacularly fabulously better) is that he can also pitch deep into games and alleviate the workload the bullpen took on while all these starting pitcher injuries were occurring.

The bullpen absorbed a lot while the Astros, at one point, were missing four of their five starting pitchers who were supposed to open the season. Currently our bullpen ranks ninth in all of baseball in innings pitched, so a little rest and relaxation is in order.

Astro fans have been looking forward to having the beard back though. And Keuchel is coming off a rehab start that was vintage Keuchel as he went five innings with five strikeouts, three hits and one run using only 62 pitches to do so.

The great thing about this big lead the Astros have in the standings is that they have the luxury to bring Keuchel back slowly and work him back up to full strength and get his grip back on his pitches. With the lead the Astros have, Keuchel can almost treat the first two starts back like spring training (barring some insane ten game losing streak.)

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We now get to see the rotation the way it was meant to be heading into 2017. Now if we can just get the offense healthy again, the sky is the limit for this team. Maybe a trade isn’t needed after all. Except for in the bullpen. We uh…we definitely should add help in the bullpen.

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