You think Jesus could cover as much of the plate that Jose can? Is Jesus as clutch? The world may never know.
Another 30HR season for the Astros GOAT. Going to be interesting to see if he can finish his career strong and end up a top 3 second baseman of all time.
Met a lady from Venezuela last week who's friends with Altuve. She showed pics and had his number. She knows Omar Vizquel too
Altuve coveres *all* of the plate...and then the 2 plates sitting outside of that one, and the one on the inside, and the one over his shoulders, and the one that the ball bounces on before it gets to the actual plate....
Let’s go the best case scenario route, he’s almost at 1800 career hits and 160 career hrs. He’s 31, if he averages 160 hits and 25 hrs in the next 4 seasons he’s at about 2450 hits and 260 hrs at the end of his age 35 season. I don’t know when he would retire but I’m thinking it would be around 38-39. He’d have 4 seasons from then on to get about 550 hits and 40 hrs to give him 3000 and 300 for his career. If you pair that with more postseason success, I wouldn’t be able to come up with a better second baseman in my lifetime. That being said I laid out a super optimistic but in my opinion realistic projection of Jose’s career. A lot can happen injury and regression wise but I don’t think it can be understated that he’s a generational type player.
If Altuve gets shamed by his wife for taking jerseys off (prior to 2019) imagine how she would react if she read the forum!
Just to be that guy, here's some 2B he trails in career WAR: Joe Morgan (trails by 60) Rod Carew (has double Altuve's WAR, ~double the years too) Lou Whitaker (+34, this surprised me, why was he not a shoe-in HOF?) Sandberg (+20) Pedroia (+10) Knoblauch (+3) You've got other recent names above him like Cano, Alomar, Kinsler, Randolph, Utley.... etc...here's the list: https://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/jaws_2B.shtml I'm not being negative on purpose, but he's got a ways to go, like you said.
I just picked some random "contemporaties", but I'll say Sandberg was damn good as a young guy in the 80's.
I remember that. But for the full body of work, I'll still take Biggio. If Tuve keeps it up, him too.
Altuve is on pace to make the hall of fame, but I think his defense isn’t good enough anymore for him to be in the conversation as top 3 even if he keeps up a similar offensive pace. That’s not to say he’s as bad defensively as Jeff Kent or anything. Outside of contemporaries when you are talking all time second baseman you have Eddie Collins and Rogers Hornsby. Both of them had seasons of 10+ WAR and over 120 WAR for their career. If he keeps it up, he might finish with career numbers similar to Robinson Cano who would be a lock hall of famer except for the PED usage. He could be in the running for greatest Astro ever particularly when you consider the context of some of his biggest performances.
At this point him being inner circle Hall of Famer is pretty much off the table. Age 28-32 should be the absolute pinnacle of your performance, and while Altuve has been really good in 3 of the last 4 years, he's certainly short of elite. In turn he's lost a lot of ground when being compared to the luminaries. 65 WAR is about the threshold for HOF with the modern metrically concerned voters. Altuve is only 2/3 of the way there, and that's with his best performing years likely behind him, and an unfortunate cheating cloud he is aligned with more than any other player (despite likely being the most innocent player on the team). Altuve has made a career of proving everybody wrong and doing things he has no business doing, but he's going to have to age extremely well, or have a 2nd peak if he's even gonna make the HOF at this point. The Biggio path of accumulating milestone numbers may be his most likely way of getting in. Unless you play for the Yankees or Red Sox, players tend to not get much credit nationally for postseason greatness.
I think thus far Altuve and Biggio are fairly close with Altuve being the slightly better batter and Biggio being a defensive stud at both C and 2B. Bagwell's offensive numbers at the same point in his career blow Altuve's completely out of the park......but so do Lance Berkman's. Where Altuve finishes all time as an Astro has a lot to do with how he finishes his career. In the hearts and minds of fans, he'll have a leg up due to the Astros winning it all, but where he ends up by more objective measures depends on how many more productive seasons he has in him. If he pulls a Biggio and drags his career out another 9 years without completely sucking, it'll go a long way towards his legacy as an Astro.
If his career ended today, Biggio, Alomar, Cano, Utley, and Pedroia would have all had better careers. Arguably Kent. If he keeps it up he could potentially pass them. Offensively he’s had basically the same season as Correa, their difference in value is on the defensive side. He probably has a few all star level years in him. The last few years where he has traded some average for power might help him in that sense.
