"rib soreness", being evaluated. https://www.cbssports.com/fantasy/baseball/news/astros-carlos-correa-out-with-rib-soreness/
Seeing lineups like this makes it harder to credibly say there's no room on this roster for Tucker/Alvarez.
Toronto said that Vlad Jr. needed to work on his defense and sent him down for 3 or 4 weeks. All you have to do is say the words and it's credible, for grievance purposes. If anyone didn't understand what was going on with 1 more year of club control for Tucker on what- June 3rd?- and super 2 for Yordan probably being 15 days away they weren't paying attention and that's on them. I'm enjoying this if you want to know the truth, seeing Super Jack Mayfield get promoted, Fisher get one last chance, Stubbs putting on a big league uniform for the first time ever on his 26th birthday, Tyler White continuing to answer the question of what it would look like if I was forced to go to work every day in a baseball uniform from a "husky" standpoint. Tony Kemp and his hugs for homers, Jake Marisnick playing full time. It's all fun and games right now, with the division more or less in hand. Hell, I'd like to see Whitley called up and watch him have a 12.2 ERA in the bigs. The Astros never had any credibility in saying there was no room on the roster for strictly purposes of abilities, but you see now why I'm sure the FO was loathe to get rid of White and Kemp for nothing, as it's nice to have both of them in the lineup tonight with all these calamities hitting at once.
I actually think the opposite in both cases. When everyone was healthy, there was legitimately no place for Tucker/Alvarez to play every day - you'd have to bench a functional player like Gurriel. White and Kemp were easy to keep on the roster then. Now, I see it as the opposite. You can carry crappy pointless players like White when you don't need the roster spots for much. But when you have AAA/AAAA players in half your lineup that have to be there for positional needs, that's when it's harder to defend having crappy guys who can only play 1B/DH. To the rest of your post - I agree about all the Super2 stuff and all that, and I'm fine with struggling through the next couple of weeks due to it. I'm sure the "no defense" is credible for MLB's purposes and should be done given the system we have. It's just not as credible coming out of Lunhow's mouth to the fans anymore.