On Tuesday night, the Astros came away with a big win against the Dodgers, but lost a lot, as an ankle injury in practice led to Carlos Correa being pulled before the game. The exact extent of the injury was initially unknown, and the shortstop/third baseman is scheduled to visit a specialist today, but MLB.com’s Brian McTaggart reported late this morning that Correa will undergo surgery and miss the entire 2026 season:
Astros source: Carlos Correa will have surgery on his left ankle and will be out for the season. A devastating injury for the Astros.
– Brian McTaggart (@brianmctaggart) May 6, 2026
This didn’t seem like the kind of mild sprain that was treated with a bag of ice and a weekend spent watching old episodes of The top chef your foot is high. Indeed, Tuesday night’s initial return was positive, with McTaggart reporting that “the expectation was that Correa would be sidelined indefinitely.” Correa’s injury is to his left ankle, not his right, which appears to have been a cause for concern when the Mets and Giants put the kibosh on their 2022 signing following team workouts.
Reacquired by Houston last summer during the Twins’ mini-fire sale, Correa stepped in as the team’s starter while Jeremy Peña was out with a hamstring injury. And with Correa off to a good start — a .279/.369/.418 line, 121 wRC+, and 1.2 WAR — the Astros’ latest injury is a real blow to the team as it tries to dig itself out of a 15-22 hole.
It’s also a significant setback for Correa, who will turn 32 later this year. After missing a lot of time in the early stages of his career due to injuries, including a broken fibula in 2014 (an injury that seems to have caused concern for the Mets’ and Giants) and back problems, Correa was healthy from 2020 to 2023. He hit IL at the end of the 2023 season, though he pitched a game-winning home run during the 2023 season. well. But he missed two months in 2024 with right plantar fasciitis, and got his bat back on track in late 2025 after joining Houston.
As injuries go, this one comes at the worst time for the Astros. One of the most enduring surprises of Houston’s lousy start is the offense that has been so good. In fact, as of Monday night, the Astros saw their best offseason record since the start of the season. The team’s 183 runs scored and 116+ wRC currently both rank fifth in baseball. The lineup has been good enough to make up for most of the sins, and with a rotation that ranks 29th in ERA and a bullpen in last place with an ERA over 6.00, there has been a lot of sins to cover us.
Even before this injury, ZiPS was concerned about the team’s depth, pessimistically showing the Astros a 12.8% playoff rate, with Correa slated for 445 plate appearances on the program’s depth charts. After accounting for the ankle, Houston’s odds of playing meaningful baseball in October dropped to 9.7%. (Their FanGraphs Playoff Odds haven’t changed much at this point, as the post-Correa realignment calls for more playing time for Isaac Paredes at third and more Yordan Alvarez at DH instead of lefty. Personally, I share ZiPS’s skepticism about the team’s depth, but time will tell.) the AL’s silver lining is a first-place cushion, but ZiPS sees the Astros as a sub-.500 team going forward.
It could actually be worse, thanks to the second silver lining: the team’s non-trade of Paredes. Acquired along with Cam Smith and Hayden Wesneski in return for Kyle Tucker in December 2024, Paredes held third base for most of the 2025 season, until a hamstring injury in July sidelined him for two months. Correa took over at third base two weeks later after he was traded to Houston, and Paredes DHed at the end of the season when he returned.
With Peña and Correa cemented on the left side and Alvarez healthy, there was no obvious place for Paredes to start this year. The team never seemed willing to try Paredes on the field, which is understandable; had the slowest home run in 2026 of any major leaguer in baseball. Paredes would probably pass me by, at least if tacos or bourbon were offered as a winning prize, but that’s surprisingly little praise. Without Paredes on the team, ZiPS would project the Astros as a 6.3% penetration shot, just. slowly over the white Sox.
Even though keeping Paredes would mitigate Correa’s loss somewhat, he doesn’t have everything to avoid there being a real cost here. It also has a bit of a domino effect; the value Paredes had as a Plan B in the infield is gone now that he’s Plan A. With the Astros in the backfield, they needed at least some top-level power wherever they could get it. Just because Houston didn’t trade Paredes after months of rumors this offseason doesn’t mean he wouldn’t be a trade option this offseason. Unless Houston likes Braden Shewmake or Shay Whitcomb more than I think they do, Paredes is now off the table in any trade right now. A team like the Red Sox, who have some depth if they can get past their injury speed bumps, would likely be interested in a powerful third baseman. Houston’s farm system isn’t strong right now, so losing Paredes as a trade option hurts the team a lot in the short term.
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Is Correa’s injury a nail in the coffin for the 2026 Houston Astros? That’s still early, but at least we can say that there is a long black car with white curtains on the windows suspiciously parked outside Daikin Park.
