Yordan Alvarez's return delayed by newly discovered hand fracture

$Yordan Alvarez's return delayed by newly discovered hand fracture$

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Yordan Alvarez's return delayed by newly discovered hand fracture

2025-06-01 02:33 Last Updated At：02:40

HOUSTON (AP) — Yordan Alvarez’s hand injury is worse than it originally appeared.

The Houston slugger felt pain in his right hand on Friday while hitting and a small fracture that was previously believed to be a muscle strain was discovered. The fracture is about 60% healed.

General manager Dana Brown said he believes the fracture in Alvarez’s fourth metacarpal wasn’t discovered in initial imaging on May 6 because there was too much inflammation and fluid.

Alvarez has been out since May 3 with the injury. They had hoped he could come off the injured list this weekend.

“The immediate plan for him right now is to just let it rest,” Brown said. “And he’ll still continue to do other baseball activity like the running, he could probably go out in the outfield and catch. He can do everything else except for pick up a bat. And so, we don’t even want him hitting off tees even though he feels good enough to hit off a tee. Just let it heal completely and then you’ll be back.”

Since Friday’s imaging showed that the fracture was already more than halfway healed, Brown doesn’t believe it will keep him out too much longer.

“We’re hopeful that because he’s healed so much that ... he’ll be back sooner rather than later,” Brown said.

Alvarez was asked when he expects to return.

“I wish I had a magic ball to tell you,” he said in Spanish through a translator. “The good news is that it’s healing well, but I need rest because the fact that I was keeping on doing swings, it was taking it back, taking it (longer) to heal.”

Brown added that they think the fracture occurred when Alvarez tried to play through the initial muscle strain. Brown said he played for almost two weeks after initially noticing the problem before the first imaging was done.

“The muscle strain was real,” Brown said. “I really think that when he was fighting through those weeks knowing that it wasn’t the same feeling as some of his hand problems in the past ... maybe that’s when he may have caused a little bit more damage.”

Alvarez hit .210 with three home runs and 18 RBIs in 29 games this season before landing on the injured list.

AP MLB: https://apnews.com/MLB

Russia's Putin begins his annual year-end news conference

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday opened his year-end news conference, an event that will be closely watched for his response to the U.S.-backed peace plan for Ukraine.

The annual live news conference is combined with a nationwide call-in show that offers Russians across the country the opportunity to ask questions of Putin, who has led the country for 25 years.

Putin has used the event to cement his power and air his views on domestic and global affairs.

U.S. President Donald Trump has unleashed an extensive diplomatic push to end nearly four years of fighting after Russia sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022, but Washington’s efforts have run into sharply conflicting demands by Moscow and Kyiv.

Putin warned this week that Moscow would seek to extend its gains in Ukraine if Kyiv and its Western allies reject the Kremlin’s demands in peace talks.

The Russian leader wants all the areas in four key regions captured by his forces, as well as the Crimean Peninsula, which was illegally annexed in 2014, to be recognized as Russian territory. He also has insisted that Ukraine withdraw from some areas in eastern Ukraine that Moscow’s forces haven’t captured yet — demands Kyiv has rejected.