MILWAUKEE — Along with some significantly warmer weather than they experienced on their season-opening trip through New York and Milwaukee, the Houston Astros could get another pleasant surprise when they return home this week: slugger Evan Gattis is close to returning from a minor league rehab assignment and could be back in the Astros lineup during their series against the Kansas City Royals.
Gattis was placed on the disabled list on April 1 (retro-active to March 25) while he continued his recovery from offseason sports hernia surgery.
He began a rehab assignment Thursday with Double-A Corpus Christi and in three games, went 5-for-12, including a 3-for-4 showing Saturday night that led to him sending manager A.J. Hinch a one-word text message.
The message? “Ready.”
“He’s feeling pretty good and he went three days in a row for the first time, and one of the things we wanted to see was him being active on the bases,” Hinch said. “An active game is what we wanted to see out of him. Once we get our organization back together, I’ll meet with (general manager) Jeff (Luhnow) and our coaching staff and figure out if he can join us this next series.”
The original plan was to keep Gattis available for catching duties, as he had during the 2013-14 seasons with Atlanta. The surgery put those plans on the back-burner but Hinch is hopeful that option will be possible as the season wears on.
“I want to keep that alive, and the most difficult decision we have is there’s not enough time to build him up as a catcher without sacrificing at-bats in the big leagues for him,” Hinch said. “Balancing that, how much can he contribute on offense and how much he changes our lineup versus building him up as a catcher and reintroducing that, that’s a big challenge and that is one of the issues with the timing of the injury.”