Jake Meyers' apparent injury puts the Astros' ‘return-to-play process' into question

New York Times

2 days ago

HOUSTON — Jake Meyers made 'return-to-play process' part of any Houston Astros fan's vernacular. Three years ago, after Meyers attempted to return from a traumatic shoulder injury, the Astros intimated he shouldn't have suited up at all.
'We just weren't seeing it there physically,' then-general manager James Click said Aug. 30, 2022, a day after the Astros optioned Meyers to Triple-A Sugar Land. 'We will review the return-to-play process to determine if there were things we could have done better to put him in a position to succeed at the major-league level.'
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Two years, 10 months and eight days later, amid the most consistent stretch of Meyers' major-league career, he crumpled to the ground before a pitch could even be thrown.
The calf Meyers injured Sunday, which then sidelined him Monday and Tuesday, gave out Wednesday. Meyers is again in the middle of a mess, and this magical season marred by medical mysteries might have its new nadir.
To hear Meyers describe it, his right calf 'tightened up' during the first-inning journey from dugout to dead center at Daikin Park. Manager Joe Espada maintained the same company line, calling the injury 'right-calf tightness,' after his team's 4-2 loss against the Cleveland Guardians.
Watching Meyers walk gingerly through the postgame clubhouse created a far more sobering scene. So did the support he required from assistant athletic trainer Eric Velazquez while limping toward the right-field loading dock.
'Credit to him, he wanted to go back out there,' said Taylor Trammell, the fill-in left fielder who just finished a four-month stint on the injured list with a calf strain of his own. 'And just kind of seeing that first step, I was like … I just wanted to be there for him. That's my brother.'
Much remains unknown about the severity of Meyers' injury. Further testing is scheduled during the team's off day Thursday. Meyers preferred to speak more in depth once that is completed but granted a small group of reporters a one-minute, 28-second interview Wednesday night.
Meyers ended it after he was asked whether this injury felt worse than what he suffered Sunday. Meyers stared toward a team spokesman and wondered aloud, 'Do I have to answer that?'
He did not.
'If I wrote him in the lineup, I felt strongly about him being able to play today,' Espada said. 'If not, I would not have put him in there today.'
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Lineup decisions begin and end with Espada, but he — and his 29 other counterparts — receives constant feedback from the training and strength and conditioning staff to inform their process. Meyers underwent no imaging after the initial injury Sunday because, Espada said, 'we didn't think that he needed it.'
'Did some ultrasounds, which it shows how the muscle and stuff is in there,' said Espada, who received a Doctor of Humane Letters from his alma mater, the University of Mobile, last May, but otherwise has little known medical background.
Houston still refuses to make any member of its medical staff available for interviews, citing the sport's collective bargaining agreement. The Pittsburgh Pirates, Minnesota Twins, Cincinnati Reds and Athletics are among the teams that must have found a loophole. All of them make their head athletic trainers available in either formal or informal settings.
'Just some tightness in there,' Espada said, 'trying to get him healthy, trying to get him back on the field.'
To do so, a group of Astros officials gathered in right field before games Tuesday and Wednesday to watch Meyers test his injured leg. Espada, head trainer Jeremiah Randall and strength coach Hazael Wessin were among the attendees Wednesday.
'A good amount of sprinting. A good dynamic warmup. Cuts in and out. Felt good doing all that,' Meyers said of Wednesday's workout. 'Good 20-25-minute workout. Hit. Went through the day like any other day.'
After Tuesday's workout, Espada acknowledged Meyers still felt tightness when changing directions. Meyers said he exited Wednesday's workout feeling 'good.' Asked whether he was 'on board' with playing, Meyers responded 'absolutely.'
Attempting to guess what might have happened across the next four hours is foolish. Everybody heals at their own pace, a fact that can't be overlooked amid this avalanche of sidelined superstars. No injury is created equal, nor is every rehab process linear.
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Setbacks happen across the sport. Timelines are altered daily. A world does exist where the Astros have absorbed a constant stream of both, enduring some of baseball's worst injury luck while their medical and strength staffs are following standard operating procedure.
Each new embarrassment makes that more difficult to believe. Something is wrong here. Across the past two seasons, the team has either failed to diagnose or failed to reveal fractures in two franchise players: Kyle Tucker and Yordan Alvarez.
It wasn't until shortstop Jeremy Peña did work with weighted balls and tried — unsuccessfully — to swing a bat that the team sent him for follow-up imaging that revealed his left-rib fracture. Pitcher Luis Garcia is in his 26th month of recovery from Tommy John surgery. Fellow starter Lance McCullers Jr. missed all of 2023 and 2024 after a slew of setbacks related to flexor tendon surgery.
Last season, while discussing pitcher J.P. France on the team's pregame radio show, general manager Dana Brown acknowledged 'maybe we may have rushed him a little bit' from a shoulder injury. France underwent surgery last June and still hasn't returned to the active roster.
Brown, like Espada, is often put in perilous predicaments while trying to discuss any of these developments. Neither man is a medical professional, but both masquerade as such in select instances. Managers and general managers around the sport are tasked with doing something similar. It is part of their job descriptions and why they are paid handsomely.
None, however, works for a franchise that has lost all benefit of the doubt in this department.
The club's communication has not helped, though noticeable strides in transparency have been evident since the saga of Alvarez's undiagnosed hand fracture.
That Click called for a review of this team's return-to-play policies is evidence enough something is amiss. Whether it ever occurred remains a mystery. Owner Jim Crane fired Click three months after he promised to analyze it.
Brown once deemed any review unnecessary, saying last June that 'you can only go by what the player's telling you.'
'I don't think,' he added, 'it's anything that we're doing.'