HOUSTON — So much started awry aside from the second baseman standing atop the Houston Astros’ lineup. His team is sporting its worst 17-game start since 2016, a byproduct of brutal starting pitching, suspect roster management, squandered scoring chances and a spate of injuries that would cripple any club.
Jose Altuve can’t cure it all, but no player is more conditioned to try. He can calm a city trying to panic and center a clubhouse full of homegrown players fighting a foreign predicament. Seasons haven’t started like this since most of them arrived. Altuve endured too many brutal beginnings to count.
Altuve is the only everyday position player remaining from that 2016 team — the last one to miss the playoffs — and the only Astro still scarred from the tanking and triple-digit losses that preceded it. He witnessed 416 losses across his first four seasons and now stands armed with a pile of perspective.
“This is nothing for Jose,” manager Joe Espada said Sunday. “He’s able to share those experiences when they were not winning a ton of games and then where we are now, how resiliency is important for us to get through these tough stretches.”
Altuve can change a game’s complexion with one swing and the tenor of a week with two or three. He needed four swings Sunday to swat two home runs off a pitcher this team otherwise hasn’t touched, continuing a start unlike many in his major-league career.
Altuve wastes no time. pic.twitter.com/QMZW6ojcHD
— Houston Astros (@astros) April 14, 2024
“I told him the last time I saw him playing like this (was from) the other side, and it was fun to watch,” said utilityman Mauricio Dubón, who didn’t arrive in Houston until 2022. “He goes, we go. Hitting is contagious. He goes, everyone goes. That’s why he’s Jose.”
Altuve sports a career .849 OPS in March and April. Only June and July are better months for him. Torrid starts are his trademark, but Altuve is authoring the sort of superb beginning to a season that he never has.
Altuve already has 26 hits in his first 68 at-bats, well on pace to pass the career-best 41 he struck across 132 plate appearances in March and April 2018. Only three major-league hitters exited Sunday with a higher OPS than Altuve’s 1.183 mark. Only Justin Turner had a higher batting average than Altuve’s .382 clip.
| Season | Plate appearances | Hits | BA | OBP | OPS | wRC+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
“Every time you do something to help your team, especially in the situation we were (in) a few days ago, it feels good,” Altuve said. “We’re trying to click as a team, flip things around and start winning, so it was good to do stuff like that.”
Altuve has seven multi-hit games across the Astros’ first 17 contests. Sunday, he supplied his fourth three-hit game in that span — and second in two days.
Altuve collected consecutive three-hit games for the 26th time in his major-league career. His two solo home runs against Texas Rangers ace Nathan Eovaldi illustrated the extent to which he’s locked in.
To start the game, Altuve annihilated an eye-high fastball in an 0-2 count, launching a well-executed pitch 397 feet into the left-field seats. Two frames later, he spit on three of Eovaldi’s secondary pitches — a first-pitch curveball and two splitters — earning a center-cut fastball he crushed into the Crawford Boxes.
Jose Altuve are you kidding me?! 🤯 pic.twitter.com/4da6EeuCij
— Houston Astros (@astros) April 14, 2024
Altuve now has seven home runs in 32 career at-bats against Eovaldi. He hasn’t hit more than three homers off any other pitcher.
“I think it’s a little back and forth. I feel like I’ll have a stretch, like, where I’m doing well getting him out and then other times where he doesn’t really drop off,” Eovaldi said. “I think the biggest challenge is the fact that he can expand out of the zone so far and then still do damage. I feel like there’s times where I make good pitches, like the first one today that I felt like I located that ball up and in and he was able to get to it.”
Altuve’s production is almost expected, but his panicless demeanor is perhaps more appreciated during this dreadful April. Altuve has been the lone constant in Houston’s otherwise chaotic start, a stabilizing force still awaiting help from his supporting cast.
Some arrived Sunday, and more are looming. Justin Verlander could make his season debut Friday against the Washington Nationals. General manager Dana Brown is optimistic Framber Valdez might return to the major-league rotation before the team travels to Mexico City on April 27-28. Adding both workhorses atop the rotation would lessen the burden on a bullpen that boasts a 5.32 ERA.
The team’s 8-5 victory against the Rangers on Sunday secured a series win while offering a blueprint of how this team is constructed to function. Seven of Houston’s other eight starters reached base, and Cristian Javier collected 21 outs, shielding the bullpen from further exposure.
During a three-run fourth, Dubón and Victor Caratini each collected two-strike hits with runners in scoring position, padding a lead Altuve created. Houston finished 3-for-9 with runners in scoring position while stranding just six base runners, two improvements for a team that spent the first 16 games searching for clutch hits.
That the Astros accomplished it without third baseman Alex Bregman, who battled an illness throughout the series, is significant. Bregman should return Monday to a lineup that already looks like one of the deepest in the American League.
Houston’s record might not reflect it, but the team exited Sunday with more hits than any offense in the sport and the American League’s highest OPS. A team reliant on run production scored 17 runs in its last 18 innings, catalyzed by one constant who can’t be fazed by his club’s slow start.
“Our team leans on him when it comes to moments like this,” Espada said, “and he steps up and gets us over the hump.”
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(Photo: Tim Warner / Getty Images)
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