Daniel Meyer<\/a> noted Alvarez scored standing up on a play before leaving but slipped on home plate, which caused his left leg to buckle.<\/p>\nThe Astros put Zach Cole into the game for Alvarez and made some adjustments in the field. Cole went into right field, while Jes\u00fas S\u00e1nchez moved from right field to left.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Houston entered play just one game behind the Seattle Mariners for first place in the AL West and two games ahead of the Rangers for the final American League wild-card spot. Every game seemingly takes on additional importance at this time of year, and the Astros’ lineup will not be nearly as formidable if Alvarez is sidelined moving forward.<\/p>\n
His resume includes a World Series title, Rookie of the Year, American League Championship Series MVP, three All-Star Game nods and a Silver Slugger, but injuries have largely prevented him from adding onto his list of accomplishments this year.<\/p>\n
Alvarez was sidelined from May 2 until Aug. 26 because of a fractured right hand, which is the primary reason he has just six home runs on the year after launching more than 30 in each of the last four seasons.<\/p>\n
Houston is surely hoping that familiar power returns down the stretch, but another injury would be a significant road block with just two weeks of games remaining.<\/p>\n
Those are critical contests as well, as next up for the Astros after the three-game series with the Rangers is a three-game set against the Mariners. Those head-to-head results could determine the division and final wild-card spot.<\/p>\n
Whether Alvarez is available for the rest of that stretch could also go a long way toward determining the races.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Houston Astros are in the middle of a tight American League West race and can ill-afford any…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":146393,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,591,85],"class_list":["post-146392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146392\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/146393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}