Kyle Tucker’s comments on his recovery have Astros fans feeling very anxious

Eric Cole

St. Louis Cardinals v Houston Astros / Logan Riely/GettyImages

While the Houston Astros have been handling business lately, including taking a series from the lowly White Sox over the weekend, they have been doing so while being far from full strength. The good news is that one of the Astros' wounded is poised to return, with Justin Verlander coming back this week, but outfielder Kyle Tucker's status has long remained far more nebulous.

It has become abundantly apparent that the Astros' characterization of Tucker's injury as a shin contusion undersold the severity quite a bit. Tucker fouled a ball off his shin at the beginning of June and he still hasn't even started a rehab assignment, and many of the updates on his condition have highlighted how slow his recovery has been.

Over the weekend, Tucker took live batting practice. When asked afterwards if he thinks he will return this season, he said, "I'm trying to," while highlighting the uncertainty of his recovery.

Astros News: Kyle Tucker's return timeline even more uncertain after his latest comments

As frustrating as it has been for fans, this has been par for the course with Tucker's injury. When people hear something like "contusion" or "bone bruise", the injury is considered minor by the laymen out there. However, these sorts of injuries can take a lot of time to recover from, and given how strongly Tucker reacted after he got hit, it is clear that he did some real damage to his leg.

The whole situation is very obviously wearing on Tucker as well. While he wants very badly to get back on the field and to feel normal again, he doesn't know when that will happen, as he said, "I really don’t know. I could just wake up one day and it feels a lot better and I’m able to do a lot more stuff. I’ve kind of been hoping for that for a while now. But it’s honestly just a day-to-day thing."

The good news is that he did take live batting practice, and running the bases is at least in the cards for the moment, although Tucker did indicate that he is still feeling the injury on some swings. Based on Tucker's hesitancy to put any sort of timeline on his return, it is becoming more and more likely that he might not return this season at all.

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Eric Cole

I started my career writing about baseball covering the Atlanta Braves for SB Nation's Talking Chop back in 2015 which has since been renamed Battery Power. After years of writing for those fine folks, I made the decision to take over as Site Expert at House That Hank Built before becoming a full-time MLB Staff Writer for FanSided in 2023. Along the way, I have been a guest on multiple ESPN radio affiliates as well as 680 The Fan and 92.9 The Game to discuss Braves baseball and especially Braves prospects and was a long-time host on the Battery Power podcast. These days, I continue to write about the Braves as well as covering the Astros, Padres, and Angels with particular expertise with minor league coverage, the MLB Draft, and bashing Anthony Rendon when possible. When I am not writing about or talking about baseball (which is seldom), I am an avid baseball card collector (Maddux and Soroka being my primary personal collections) and I also collect shark teeth. All other sports are mostly dead to me as my Bills have broken my heart too many times.