After spending most of the season chasing the rest of the division, the Houston Astros took control of the American League West Division and fended off the Texas Rangers to capture the division at 81-81 and a home wild-card round series against the Chicago White Sox.
Issues that have hurt the Astros all season long came up again against the White Sox and led to a short two-game sweep for Chicago. Pitching was an issue all season long, between injuries and poor performances and ace Hunter Brown couldn't make it out of the first inning in his Game 2 start.
There were some big additions and subtractions to the roster and pitching staff last offseason, but not all worked out. In fact, one didn't even last the whole season in Houston and was labeled as the Astros' biggest disappointment in 2026.
Houston Astros pitcher Mike Burrows Credit: Brad Mills-Imagn Images | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect
Joel Reuter of Bleacher Report listed each MLB team's biggest surprise and biggest disappointment for the 2026 season. To really nobody's surprise, right-handed pitcher Mike Burrows was listed as Houston's biggest disappointment.
How tough a season was it for Burrows and manager Joe Espada? The 26-year-old went 4-9 with a 5.99 ERA in 18 games, with 75 strikeouts in 94.2 innings. An 11th-round pick of the Pittsburgh Pirates in the 2018 MLB Draft, Burrows was sent down to Triple-A after a July 6 start against the Washington Nationals, where he allowed 10 runs, seven earned, on nine hits in 4.1 innings. He never made it back to Houston the rest of the season. Burrows ended up dealing with an elbow injury later in the summer.
"The Astros gave up two high-profile prospects in Jacob Melton and Anderson Brito to acquire Burrows in a three-team deal with the Pirates and Rays. He was demoted to Triple-A in early July after a brutal outing against the Nationals and did not return to the MLB roster,'' Reuter wrote.
What hurts the most about that deal for Burrows is not that he lasted just half the season in the majors, but it's the prospect's former general manager, Dana Brown , gave up in the three-team trade with the Pirates and Tampa Bay Rays.
Whoever is hired to make decisions this winter for the Astros is going to have a lot of them to make. With an aging roster and a pitching staff that was barely held together as the season went along after Framber Valdez left in free agency for the Detroit Tigers, there is a lot of work to do, and there are questions surrounding Burrows. The 2027 rotation will likely look different whenever spring training begins.
This article was originally published on www.si.com/mlb/astros/onsi as Astros Biggest Disappointment of 2026 Season Was Struggling Right-Handed Pitcher .
