HOUSTON \u2014 Jose Altuve is not demonstrative. He did once remove his sock in protest of a call, but otherwise he prefers to play with poise. Scandal, scorn, seminal moments and storybook endings haven\u2019t altered Altuve\u2019s abiding stoicism.<\/p>\n
A strikeout in mid-June of his 16th major-league season did. After Altuve swung through a fastball above his eyes, he spiked his batting helmet with such force that it created an audible crack. Altuve flung his bat and began a slow trudge toward second base.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s pissed,\u201d manager Joe Espada said after the eruption. \u201cHe knows he\u2019s better than what he is showing right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
The outburst is so out of character that it could conjure concern, both for Altuve\u2019s psyche and a path forward from this dismal start. He sports a .715 OPS after 230 plate appearances and is anchored in the five-hole of the Houston Astros\u2019 batting order. Before this season, Altuve had never batted fifth in his major-league career.<\/p>\n
Why it’s too early to talk about the MLB trade deadline<\/p>\n
Ken Rosenthal<\/p>\n
Altuve\u2019s 22.6 percent strikeout rate is almost 10 points higher than his career average. He is a lifetime .301 hitter staring at a .234 batting average. According to both Baseball Reference and FanGraphs, no Astros position player with at least 200 plate appearances is worth fewer wins above replacement than the face of this franchise.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just have to do better,\u201d Altuve said. \u201cI have to swing at better pitches. I have to hit the ball hard. I\u2019m working on that, but I just have to be better and help this team win.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously I\u2019m a little frustrated in how my season\u2019s going.\u201d<\/p>\n
There is danger in trying to dismiss a man who has defied logic and reason since the day Astros officials sent him home from his first professional tryout.<\/p>\n
Altuve\u2019s go-ahead, three-run home run in the sixth inning of Friday\u2019s 9-3 win over the Cleveland Guardians proved it. So did turning on a 98.4 mph fastball for a seventh-inning double that traveled 385 feet to left-center field. Altuve had put only three harder pitches in play all season.<\/p>\n
\u201cHopefully tonight, two big swings, I can show up tomorrow and do similar things and I can turn my season around,\u201d Altuve said.<\/p>\n
Altuve may no longer be a lineup linchpin, but he remains this team\u2019s heart and soul \u2014 someone it can\u2019t survive without. Yordan Alvarez authoring a season worthy of American League MVP honors masks some of Altuve\u2019s malaise. So does Christian Walker\u2019s resurgence and Jeremy Pe\u00f1a\u2019s power atop the order.<\/p>\n
That Houston boasts one of baseball\u2019s worst-performing outfields, coupled with the club\u2019s complete absence of position-player depth, still makes it mandatory for Altuve to manufacture a resurgence. He took early batting practice in a T-shirt and shorts before Friday\u2019s game.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a little bit of everything,\u201d Altuve said. \u201cIt can be a little bit of your swing, pitch recognition and all the stuff mixed together. Hitting is hard. If you make it harder, it\u2019s going to be impossible.\u201d<\/p>\n
Altuve turned 36 last month. This slump and subsequent ones to come during the next three seasons of his contract will always prompt wonder about whether aging is affecting him. Altuve\u2019s 69 mph average bat speed is his lowest since Statcast started measuring it in 2023. In 2024, though, Altuve won a Silver Slugger and made an All-Star team with bat speed that averaged 69.4 mph.<\/p>\n
Altuve entered Friday with a 25.7 percent whiff rate. He\u2019s never finished a season with one higher than 22.2 percent. At times, Altuve has bemoaned becoming too pull-happy, but he\u2019s on pace to finish with his lowest pull rate since 2019. His groundball rate is elevated, and he is averaging just a 7.8-degree launch angle on the contact he makes. Altuve is a master of manufacturing infield hits, but doing so routinely at 36 is a different story.<\/p>\n
Straining his oblique in May didn\u2019t help, but even across the 185 plate appearances before he did, Altuve sported a .706 OPS.<\/p>\n
Since coming off the injured list on June 5, Altuve is 8-for-42. He has struck out 17 times, including twice more Friday. He refrained from throwing anything after his second strikeout, but he did slap himself in the helmet and throw a hand up in disgust before reaching the dugout.<\/p>\n
Altuve did not go on a minor-league rehab assignment before returning from his oblique injury. Asked whether that is a factor, Altuve interrupted the premise and proclaimed, \u201cThat\u2019s just excuses.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat guy,\u201d Pe\u00f1a said with a smile, \u201cyou call it a slump and then he has a week where he hits 10 home runs and he\u2019s right back to normal. He\u2019s a special player. He\u2019s been doing it for so long. He knows how to get himself back in the game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pe\u00f1a\u2019s faith permeates the clubhouse. Altuve is often last on the Astros\u2019 list of worries, even when his woes appear at their worst. He is one of the sport\u2019s streakiest hitters, someone who always seems one swing away from a breakthrough. It is what made his final two at-bats Friday feel so consequential.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s getting to that point where he wants to come through (for) the team, and we know eventually that\u2019s going to happen,\u201d said Espada, an eternal optimist who has witnessed the past nine years of Altuve\u2019s career and can tell when things are about to turn.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love the fact that he threw his helmet,\u201d Espada said with a grin. \u201cThat really fired me up.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HOUSTON \u2014 Jose Altuve is not demonstrative. He did once remove his sock in protest of a call,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":715491,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[373,363,99],"class_list":["post-715490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-houston-astros","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=715490"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715490\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/715491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=715490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=715490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=715490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}