Pint-sized Altuve looks like an MVP
Astros second baseman’s durability more than matches his production at the plate
HOUSTON— Of all his wondrous statistics this season, Jose Altuve cares most about games played. Altuve, the Houston Astros’ second baseman, has played all 101 this season, part of an active streak that leads the majors.
“I feel proud to be able to play every day,” Altuve said. “That’s what makes me really happy. Numbers, they can change. You can be here, then tomorrow you can be there. But I think the value of a player that goes out there and plays every day is big.”
When Altuve is the player, the value could not be higher. With two months to go, he is the clear leader for the American League Most Valuable Player Award. Only one Astro has been his league’s MVP — Jeff Bagwell in 1994. Bagwell is on the cusp of election to the Hall of Fame.
Altuve, 26, has a long way to go. But his trajectory is encouraging. Before Thursday night’s games, he was leading the majors in hits and batting average. He was second in the American League in stolen bases and onbase percentage. He’s tied for second in total bases with Toronto’s Josh Donaldson, the reigning AL MVP.
Last year, he won a Gold Glove at second base.
“He won the batting title two years ago, and he came in even hungrier the next year,” said Astros infielder Marwin Gonzalez, who has known Altuve since they were teenagers in Venezuela.
“That’s what people don’t know about him. Whatever he ends the season with this year, he’s gonna want more next year and he’s gonna work even harder. It’s never enough for him.”
Few have packaged their numbers quite the way Altuve is doing now. The last player to finish the season as the AL leader in average, hits, onbase percentage, steals and total bases was Ty Cobb in 1917.
Cobb also led in slugging percentage — his six home runs ranked fourth in the league — and Altuve’s .566 mark ranks among the leaders. His 17 homers are a career high and a direct result, the Astros believe, of being more selective.
Every season, manager A.J. Hinch said, Altuve sets a new goal. Two years ago, before Hinch arrived, Altuve wanted to lead the league in hits. Last season, he wanted to win his first Gold Glove. This season, he wanted to improve his strike-zone judgment.
That sounds elementary, but Altuve does not need to swing at strikes to get hits. Like Yogi Berra (who was 5 feet 7 inches, an inch taller than Altuve), he is a classic bad-ball hitter.
“He didn’t have as much incentive as the other guys to change his approach,” general manager Jeff Luhnow said, “because he could swing at aball well outside the zone, a ball that we would say you should never swing at, and he could actually hit it for a single, a double and occasionally a home run. So the feedback mechanism wasn’t coming back saying: ‘Don’t do that.’ He was basically so gifted at bat control that he could get away with it.”
Essentially, Altuve decided that being able to hit bad pitches did not preclude him from hunting good ones. After five major league seasons, he said, he could use a more sophisticated game plan by making pitchers respect his discipline.
“Year by year, you learn a little bit every day,” Altuve said. “Sometimes you go to home plate and you have an idea, like a clear idea, of what they’re going to throw to you. I think that’s all: getting better pitches to hit, realizing when you hit the ball better, what pitch you hit, if you’re chasing too much. If you figure out all that, you can get a little better as a player.”
The Astros play the Blue Jays in Houston Monday and are in the hunt for a wild-card spot trailing Boston by just a game before Thursday.
They have largely been rewarded for an organizational commitment to analytics. Altuve was originally signed by the previous regime, but signed an extension under Luhnow in 2013 that binds him to the Astros through 2019. The maximum value of the deal, if the team exercises two club options, is six years and $25 million.
Altuve can still reach free agency at age 29, but the deal is a bargain for the Astros, who did not know he would evolve this way.