Lance McCullers Injury: Could debut in late April

General manager Dana Brown said Sunday that the Astros' series with the Royals that runs from April 25 through 27 could be a potential target for McCullers' (forearm) season debut, Matt Kawahara of the Houston Chronicle reports. "That would be pretty encouraging, but we don't want to rush it," Brown said.

McCullers made the third start of his minor-league rehab assignment Saturday with Triple-A Sugar Land and delivered his best performance yet; he struck out five over four scoreless innings, yielding just one hit and one walk. He covered 61 pitches in the outing, inducing 13 whiffs while averaging 91.4 miles per hour on his 13 sinkers, 80.5 mph on 13 curveballs and 85.1 mph on 12 sliders, according to Brian McTaggart of MLB.com. All of those velocity readings were a couple ticks below his averages from his last healthy season in 2022, but McCullers noted that it's not an unexpected development, and he's happy overall with how his surgically repaired forearm has been responding coming out of his first three rehab starts. According to Chandler Rome of The Athletic, McCullers will shift his rehab to Double-A Corpus Christi for his fourth rehab start next weekend. He's expected to reach 75-to-80 pitches in that outing, and if all goes well, he'll be activated from the 15-day injured list to make his 2025 Astros debut during the Kansas City series.