The long and short of it: Judge, Altuve star in series
Every once in a while, the planets align, giant Jupiter and tiny Mercury, and we get the two best players in the American League Championship Series at the same vector, in the same camera shot, near the same base, and we are left to remind ourselves, for the millionth time, baseball is a wondrous game.
Aaron Judge, the New York Yankees’ rookie right fielder, will reach down — way down — and pat Jose Altuve, the Houston Astros’ second baseman, on the back, as he did Wednesday after hitting an RBI double in the third inning, and the game will go on. But the wonder remains.
It is a wonder Judge and Altuve even play the same sport, let alone that they are two of its greatest practitioners — the leading candidates for AL Most Valuable Player this season and the engines of their respective teams’ offenses in the ALCS, which the Yankees lead three games to two entering Friday night’s Game 6 at Houston’s Minute Maid Park.
Judge, 25, is a 6-foot-7, 280-pound mountain of muscle, the likes of which the sport has never seen, an NFL tight end in pinstripes, a slugger who set a rookie record this season with 52 home runs, including the longest and the hardest-hit of the year. He is a primary reason the Yankees stand one win away from the World Series, having gone 4-for-9 with two homers, two doubles and six RBIs and also having contributed a couple of dazzling defensive plays as the Yankees took Games 3, 4 and 5 at Yankee Stadium this week.
Altuve, meanwhile, is listed at 5-6, 165 pounds, but acknowledges he is actually 5-5. A 27-year-old Venezuelan, he is a wizard with both the bat and the glove, a speeding blur on the bases, a three-time AL batting champ, the first player in history to lead his league in hits for four straight seasons. He hit three homers in Game 1 of the Division Series against Boston and almost single-handedly willed the Astros to victories over the Yankees in Games 1 and 2 in Houston, scoring the go-ahead runs in each with daring baserunning and robbing the Yankees of hits in the field.
“I don’t really care how tall he is. It’s his ability that speaks for itself,” Astros Manager A.J. Hinch said of Altuve. “He’s the most consistent player in the league . ... Five-six, 6-6, 100 pounds, 200 pounds, 300 pounds — it’s more about what he does, not about the package it comes from.”
But while Judge and Altuve are the focal points of their respective lineups, the ones the other team never wants to see at the plate at the biggest moments, they are also the largest black holes, sucking in their teams’ entire production when they disappear. In the Yankees’ two losses in Houston, Judge went 1-for-7 with three strikeouts, dropping his postseason batting average to that point to .129 (4for-31) and upping his strikeout total to 19. In the Astros’ three losses in the Bronx, Altuve was 0-for-10 and scored just one run.
Altuve might beat out Judge for the MVP award. He has a slight edge in wins above replacement, as calculated by Baseball-Reference.com, and had a more consistent season than Judge, who endured a much-examined twomonth slump in the second half. But when he’s around Judge, Altuve is just like the rest of us, gazing on in wonder at what the big man can do on a baseball field.
“Maybe in another life,” Altuve said, “I want to be Aaron Judge and hit all those homers.”