Yordan Alvarez’s latest comments about his hand injury do not exactly flatter the Houston Astros’ medical staff.
The 6’4″ slugger has not played since Houston’s May 2 loss against the Chicago White Sox due to what the team initially listed as “inflammation” in his right hand. The Astros were optimistic that Alvarez would be able to suit up for this weekend’s series against the Tampa Bay Rays.
However, based on a report published Saturday by The Athletic’s Chandler Rome, Alvarez’s return sounds far from imminent. Astros general manager Dana Brown told reporters that a “small” fracture was reportedly discovered in Alvarez’s injured hand. Brown stated that the fracture was around “60 percent healed.”
Alvarez admitted that the injury occurred before his final outing on May 2. He ended up playing through the pain, thinking the injury would heal naturally. That decision appears to have caused the fracture to develop.
“I didn’t think it was going to be something big,” Alvarez told Rome, via an interpreter. “But I think the fact that I kept playing caused my hand to stress more and caused the small fracture.
“It doesn’t surprise me that it was fractured. … Time passed, and it was supposed to get better, but it wasn’t like that. I knew I couldn’t go out there and support three or four games out there.”
Per the report, the Astros recently had Alvarez face a couple of minor league pitchers to gauge his readiness to return in the weekend series against the Rays. While Alvarez was able to make quality contact during the batting session, the pain persisted and was deemed too much to play through.
Astros fans can only hope that Alvarez’s hand issue is not going to be a repeat of what happened to Kyle Tucker last season. Tucker injured his shin last June in what the team initially called a “shin contusion.”
The Astros later discovered that Tucker had actually suffered a small fracture in his shin, which sounds eerily similar to what Alvarez is currently going through.
