HOUSTON — After a season defined by injuries and how the Houston Astros handled them, the team did not renew the contract of longtime head athletic trainer Jeremiah Randall, two league sources told The Athletic on Thursday.
According to both Baseball Prospectus and FanGraphs, no team lost more potential value to injuries this season than the Astros, who ended their eight-season streak of postseason appearances under the weight of that attrition.
At one point in mid-July, Houston had 18 players on the injured list. Twenty-eight Astros spent at least some time sidelined.
Three of the Astros’ four All-Stars — third baseman Isaac Paredes, shortstop Jeremy Peña and closer Josh Hader — spent more than a month on the injured list. Slugger Yordan Alvarez appeared in just 48 games following a saga that called into question Houston’s much-maligned “return to play procedure.”
After diagnosing Alvarez with a “muscle strain” in his right hand in early May, the Astros allowed him to face live pitching at Daikin Park. Alvarez complained of more pain, which prompted the team to send him for more imaging. It revealed a fracture. Houston took no additional imaging before putting Alvarez in the batter’s box.
“Potentially more imaging, I think that may have helped us,” general manager Dana Brown acknowledged last week. “But it’s difficult when imaging is telling you one thing — you try to go with what you’re seeing — but maybe we (could have) gotten more imaging with Alvarez.”
Brown’s predecessor, James Click, promised a review of the team’s “return to play procedure” after Jake Meyers’ unsuccessful return from shoulder surgery in 2022. Owner Jim Crane “parted ways” with Click that winter, prompting speculation about whether the audit ever took place.
Throughout the season, Brown tried to downplay the team’s rash of injuries, ascribing them to either industry-wide trends or fluke accidents. Some of them were flukes, be it pitcher Spencer Arrighetti’s fractured thumb during batting practice or Peña’s fractured rib on a hit by pitch. Three members of Houston’s starting rotation underwent Tommy John surgery, which is almost becoming an accepted practice in this era.
Other instances, however, cast serious doubt on the Astros’ return to play procedure, none more than Meyers’ injuring himself while running out to his position prior to the first inning of a game July 9.
Meyers had sustained a right calf injury a few days earlier, but never went on the injured list. Before the July 9 game, Meyers tested out his calf while under the supervision of the athletic training staff and strength and conditioning staff. Meyers reinjured himself before the game began and missed nearly two months.
Randall, who represented the team at the All-Star Game this season, had led the Astros’ athletic training staff since 2015.
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