It’s not easy: Altuve soars toward 200 more hits
OAKLAND – It’s not as easy as he makes it look.
Considering his four consecutive
200-plus-hit seasons, the three batting titles, plus his youth and durability, it might not be too crazy to project Jose Altuve as a future member of the
3,000-hit club.
Such a notion came up when Albert Pujols became the 32nd player to attain the magical milestone last weekend. The Tigers’ Miguel Cabrera, with
2,666 hits, looms as the logical next candidate to join such exalted company, and the Mariners’ Robinson Cano, who ranks second among active players with 2,412 hits, makes sense as well.
But online projections also list Altuve as a solid possibility even though he just reached 1,300 last Thursday.
Altuve finds the mere mention flattering — and far-fetched.
The Astros second baseman turned
28 on Sunday, and he’s again among
“Most of you will want to write down 200 hits for the next however many years. It’s not going to happen that way.’
A.J. Hinch Astros manager,
On projecting Jose Altuve’s statistics
the majors’ top hitters after leading the American League in hits four years in a row, so it’s a little startling to hear him say baseball gets harder every day.
“I’m coming off the best year of my career, a season when I won the MVP and we won the World Series, and maybe at one point I thought, ‘Maybe now that I have some experience everything will be easier,’ ” Altuve said in a Spanish-language interview.
“But I come in this year and it’s the same. You’re still going up against very talented pitchers. You might hit the ball well and the right fielder makes a great play on you, or the shortstop. What I mean by this is I don’t much believe in projections, because baseball is so hard.”
That’s a concept his teammates have heard him express before, and they don’t need to be reminded of the game’s challenges. But then they see Altuve spray line drives in all directions, or foul off several pitches until he gets the one he wants, or reach for an outside pitch and dump it into right field, and they just nod in appreciation of his rare skills.
Altuve logged 1,272 hits in his first 1,000 games. Of the 25 players to collect more in that span, 18 are in the Hall of Fame.
Since the beginning of the 2014 season, Altuve has banged out 897 hits, by far the most in baseball. The Rockies’ Charlie Blackmon is more than 100 behind at 780.
Astros pitcher Charlie Morton, who faced Altuve six times when he was with the Pirates, said there’s no one way to pitch to him because of his extensive plate coverage. Defenders can’t crowd him because he’s liable to rip a shot past them, and they can’t play back because of Altuve’s proclivity for legging out hits.
“What he can do with the bat makes him a threat to every aspect of the defense, from pitching to field positioning,” Morton said. “He’s just a pure allaround hitter.”
Which makes the idea of one day aiming for 3,000 less improbable than Altuve makes it sound, even when he says, “I can’t think about 3,000 hits because I don’t even have 1,500 yet.”
Houston manager A.J. Hinch, an un- abashed fan, said Altuve’s string of 200hit seasons shouldn’t be taken for granted just because he churns them out so regularly. Since he began his current streak in 2014, all the other big-leaguers have combined for eight seasons with that many hits, or twice his individual total.
With a major league-high 52 hits already, Altuve is on pace for yet another couple of hundred, but that kind of output is not automatic.
“Most of you will want to write down
200 hits for the next however many years,” Hinch told reporters. “It’s not going to happen that way. It’s just not normal to put up those hit totals.
“He needs health. He needs to continue to refine his swing, to continue to combat the defenses and pitches that come his way that make it difficult at this level to continue the performance.”
Durability was one of the biggest questions surrounding 5-6 Altuve when he broke into the major leagues at 21 in
2011, and he has responded by averaging
154 games played over his six full seasons.
He figures to stick around for a while after signing in the spring a contract extension worth $163.5 million that takes him through the 2024 season, when he’ll be 34. Despite the riches, Altuve says he would play until 50 if they let him.
Anybody who doubts that probably hasn’t noticed the joy Altuve derives from the game, which was apparent to then-Astros Latin American coordinator Al Pedrique when he signed the undersized prospect as a 16-year-old out of Venezuela in 2007.
“We saw at the academy how enthusiastic he was about playing the game, how he cheered his teammates on,” said Pedrique, now the A’s first-base coach. “I would often talk to the English teacher and Altuve was always among the top five. Same thing with the work in the gym.”
Now a sturdy 165 pounds, Altuve integrated power into his game in recent years, banging out 24 homers in each of the last two seasons.
But speed is still a big part of his tool kit. Since his debut, Altuve’s 194 infield hits rank second in the majors to Dee Gordon’s 234.
Altuve recognizes he’s likely to slow down as he ages but believes he can compensate with his enhanced baseball knowledge.
“I know how they’re pitching me now and how to handle it,” said Altuve, who is batting .331. “There were some pitches two or three years ago that I was hoping not to get, where I would think, ‘That pitcher is going to throw me nothing but this and I can’t hit it.’ Now I have a very good idea of how to adjust to that. I think as I keep playing, those kinds of things will continue to happen.”
And teammates believe he will continue to sprinkle the field with hits. Third baseman Alex Bregman extols the physical preparation that might allow Altuve to play well into his 30s, and he marvels at his teammate’s ability to hit the long ball while maintaining a high contact rate.
“His bat-to-ball skills are unbelievable,” Bregman said. “He makes hard contact. He’s fast and uses his speed. He’s a pure hitter. That’s what he was born to do. There’s no doubt in my mind he’ll get to 3,000. No doubt. Everybody knows he’ll do it. He’s well on his way.”