Report suggests Astros were misleading everyone about Kyle Tucker’s injury all along

For the longest time, the Houston Astros were steadfast in saying that Kyle Tucker's injury was a shin contusion that was just taking a long time to heal. It isn't unheard of for bone bruises to take a while to recover from, but the lack of clarity and transparent updates from the team was pretty telling. Instead of saying that all parties were taking things one day at a time, updates of any kind were scarce, and when they did come, they usually came with long and vague timetables.

With the word that Tucker was close to returning this week, it appeared that Astros fans could put this whole saga behind them and get back to enjoying the AL MVP candidate playing baseball again. However, the news of his return also brought word that Tucker's injury was very likely a fracture all along, which raises a whole bunch of questions.

Astros star Kyle Tucker's injury was apparently a fracture, which is definitely not what fans were being told

There is an explanation here that isn't insidious, and general manager Dana Brown has already been trying to make that very case. Brown indicated that while the team couldn't see a fracture in his scans, the length of his recovery and his symptoms made the Astros suspect that a small fracture existed.

On the one hand, this explains why Tucker has been out for so long, and why Houston has been very careful with him as he recovered. Missing multiple months with a bone bruise certainly raised some eyebrows, but missing that amount of time when there are broken bones involved (even small ones) is basically par for the course, if unfortunate.

That said, Houston comes off as very deceptive and misleading in all of this. One can understand playing things close to the vest, but leaving Tucker's status purposefully vague, like the Astros clearly did, made the player look unnecessarily soft and the Astros' medical staff look inept, which isn't fair to either party. No wonder Houston was completely unwilling to let their trainers talk to the media. It feels likely that the Astros knew something more serious was going on, and just didn't want to share it with the public.

In the end, things should work out. Tucker is coming back, and it isn't like the team downplayed his injury and forced him to come back quickly. While the information from the team was bad and misleading, it does at least seem like they did right by Tucker and had him come along slowly from what was a much more serious injury than initially thought. Hopefully when Tucker returns as soon Wednesday, we can all forget this ever happened.

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