It feels like we have seen this movie before. Last season, in fact.
It was last season when Luis Garcia was attempting to return from Tommy John surgery. The Astros were banking on his return so much they didn’t bother to reinforce the pitching staff, something now-former Astros GM Dana Brown would express regret over.
Luis Garcia was pitching, but his velocity was notably down. The team played it off as normal, and that he would continue to work and build his velocity. That wasn’t really the case
though.
Garcia’s velocity wasn’t slightly down, it was way down. A healthy Luis Garcia threw 94 MPH on average. The 2025 version was averaging 91 MPH. 3 MPH in any situation should send up all the red flags, but especially when coming back from TJ.
It would turn out the Astros would continue to pitch Garcia through all of those red flags, and he would wind up tearing his UCL and require a second Tommy John surgery. They released him in the offseason.
Fast forward to today. Ronel Blanco may be following in Luis Garcia’s footsteps.
Blanco has seen his velocity drop as he works through the game. Here is what he was throwing last night in a game in which he was clobbered for 10 runs in 2+ innings:
Notice the drop as the game went on, the more pitches he threw. He couldn’t maintain velocity, even in the thin, hot desert air in Las Vegas. This should be sending up all the red flags again.
Blanco got his start as a reliever with the Astros. In 2022, he averaged 95.2 MPH on his fastball. It was 94.5 in 2023.
Blanco then got moved to the starting rotation by Dana Brown. Working longer in games, he would back down the velocity once again, to 93.4 MPH, and has stayed in that range as a starter.
Blanco’s velocity dropping over 2 MPH in under 80 pitches should say a lot about where he is in his recovery. Specifically, that he isn’t recovered. That he isn’t ready to throw 60 pitches. That things are off, and need to be re-examined.
Players are assets, they are not gladiators to be discarded at the whim of the mob. Blanco is a man with a career, and that career shouldn’t be jeopardized because the current iteration of the Astros has a starting rotation with a bottom 3 ERA in all of baseball.
It’s clear something is off. Rather than continue to throw him out there until he breaks, they should be proactive. Shut him down. Run more tests. Find out what’s going on in his elbow, find out about the rest of his body as well. Sometimes after injuries, things feel off and pitchers make small tweaks. Those small tweaks often lead to another serious injury.
But most importantly, shut him down before that serious injury rears it’s head again. There is no need to put Blanco’s career in jeopardy with lazy rehab management. This is exactly part of the “return to play” procedures that Brown said the team would examine and correct (to dubious results thus far).
Blanco is 3 days shy of his 33rd birthday. He doesn’t deserve to have his career potentially ended because the team didn’t want to continue to do it’s homework on him. Shut him down. Find out what’s wrong. Get him right.
Continuing to pitch him in his current state is doing nothing but damage.
