You would think it would be difficult to be impressed with Jose Altuve at this point, given he’s been so good for a few years now and we so often dismiss the known for the new. But he keeps finding ways to impress.
Jose Altuve is hitting over .500 in July, is underrated
Tuesday’s Say Hey, Baseball looks at Jose Altuve’s ridiculous month and all the trade rumor info you can handle.
Photo by Drew Hallowell/Getty Images
Altuve is batting .507 in July, in which there are only six days left. It is not an empty .507, if there were even such a thing: Altuve’s line for the month, over 17 games and 83 plate appearances, is .507/.554/.760.
What’s incredible is that batting over .500 for the month hasn’t raised Altuve’s numbers as much as you’d think. He was already hitting .330/.401/.528 at the end of June, so while things have certainly improved and he’s now at .365/.431/.574, this wasn’t some weird rebalancing from earlier struggles that brought Altuve close to his norm. This was Altuve already having an Altuvian season and then taking things to the next level.
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Altuve hit .341 in 2014 but slugged .453, not showing much power at all considering the rate at which he picked up hits. The next year, though, his slugging went up six points while his average dropped nearly 30 points, and those mild power gains increased significantly in 2016, when he once again led the league in average but this time slugged .531 in the process.
Over the last four seasons, Altuve is one of two players in the league with at least 2,500 plate appearances along with Brian Dozier, and Altuve’s OPS+ of 145 in that stretch dwarfs Dozier’s 116 mark.
Even if you take playing time out of it — though why would you, given health is a key factor in a player’s productivity as well — Altuve still ranks 10th in the majors in OPS+ since 2014, min. 1,500 plate appearances. Go back to just 2016, and he’s third behind only Mike Trout and Freddie Freeman.
Altuve is a special talent who doesn’t get talked about enough, and he seems to just keep getting better. Considering how good this Astros team he’s on has been, people might have to start noticing sooner than later.
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