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

The Houston Astros slugger felt pain in his right hand 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 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 said he doesn’t believe it will keep Alvarez 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 an interpreter. “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 said 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.