Center Field Is Now Lucas Spence. That's Where Houston Stands.

Daulton Varsho is on the operating table and Jake Meyers has been on the 60-day IL all season. That leaves Lucas Spence as the depth chart's answer in center field for a team that needs to go roughly 10-3 over its final 13 games to have any realistic conversation about October. That's not a knock on Spence — it's just the math of where this roster has arrived.

The center field depth chart tells the story of the whole season in miniature. Varsho ranked first at the position but produced at a fraction of a full-time starter's rate before his wrist ended things entirely. Meyers is behind him and unavailable. Spence is third. Joe Espada will patch something together, likely pulling from the outfield corners, but there is no clean solution here and there wasn't going to be one regardless.

Thirteen games left, 2.5 back of the last wild card, and the roster is now navigating without a permanent general manager, without Correa, without Burrows, and without a center fielder who has played meaningful innings this year. The Astros went 3-7 over their last ten games scoring roughly three and a half runs a night. Yordan Alvarez remains the only reliable offensive engine on the roster, and his own availability has been uncertain since mid-September. At some point the list of things that have to break right becomes longer than the list of games remaining.