By Yours Truly
https://throneberryfields.blogspot.com/2018/03/extending-altuve.html
Apparently, the world champion Astros mean business about staying as competitive as they were to get to and win last year's World Series in
the first place. You don't sign your defending American League Most Valuable Player to a five year, $151 million extension if you're in the mood
for practical jokes.
Basically, the Astros and Jose Altuve stay together until his age-34 season. The extension kicks in after Altuve plays out his current deal, earning
$6 million this season with the Astros picking up his 2019 club option for $6.5 million. The whole thing also means Altuve's extension doesn't
overlap with Justin Verlander's $28 million over these coming two seasons.
Pinocchio, you're a real boy now.
Just a few years ago the Astros had baseball's lowest payroll and undertook a rebuild that hiccupped here and belched there while the nucleus of
their World Series winner fell into place. Now the Astros are playing with the big boys. The question is whether the Altuve deal limits the play.
The answer is . . . not necessarily. With the Altuve extension not kicking in until two years from now, the Astros have the flexibility to think about
their most immediately forthcoming free agents, pitcher Dallas Keuchel and infielder Marwin Gonzalez. Both of those men hit free agency after
2019.
And it's entirely possible that the money the Astros saved in rebuilding to their World Series triumph might enable them to think about locking
down a few other key elements of the current team---especially George Springer, last year's World Series MVP, and shortstop Carlos Correa.
Between them, Springer and Correa were worth 22.2 wins above replacement-level players in 2016 and 2017. Keuchel and Gonzalez were worth
8.2 WAR last year. These are men the Astros do not want to lose, though they may want to think prudently about Keuchel's and Gonzalez's ages:
Keuchel is in his 30-year-old season, Gonzalez in his 29-year-old season. How they play this year may have weight in what the Astros decide on
them.
Springer is 28. Correa is 23. The smart money would say those two are likelier to be thought of as longer-term Astros while Keuchel and Gonzalez
might be thought of as eventual trade bait to lure back some prospects. Right now it's anyone's guess. And the Astros must be feeling rather
content about having problems like these, as opposed to the problems they used to have.
Altuve is a five-time All Star as well as the defending AL MVP, and he, too, is a mere 28. He has 29.9 WAR in seven major league seasons, and he
earned 26.9 of them in the past four seasons. (Average WAR over those seasons: 6.7.) This guy may be the best player in baseball who isn't named
Mike Trout and didn't get knocked down a spell by the disabled list last year; since 2013 he's never missed more than nine games a season. And he
plays a position which isn't necessarily the kind for which you can relax in a lounger before a ball comes your way.
Only Aaron Judge of the Yankees among position players got anywhere near Altuve's 2017 WAR; Judge had 8.1 while Indians pitcher Corey Kluber
had 8.2. (Trout finished with 6.6 but probably would have been in the 8.0 standing or better had he not missed a third of the season with a thumb
injury; he was actually striking toward another possible MVP season when he was injured.)
And if Springer hadn't had his Series to remember, it's entirely possible that Altuve might have become the face of the world champions in their
staggering hour of triumph. He was already one of the Astros' most familiar figures since he plays the game pretty much the way Dick Allen once
suggested a young Mike Schmidt might want to remember playing it: "Remember when you were a kid and you'd skip supper to play ball? You
were having fun. With all your talent, baseball ought to be fun. Enjoy it. Be a kid again."
We're not entirely certain Altuve's forgotten how to be a kid. This guy looks like he's having fun even when he's striking out. Not that he doesn't
know how and when to be serious. When the Astros visited the White House, Altuve stood behind President Donald Trump with a deadly serious
look on his face. So serious that some thought he was trying to stare Trump down. Altuve himself said the occasion demanded he be serious.
"I'm (standing) behind the president, probably one of the most important guys in the world. can't be laughing or doing stupid things while he's
talking. I need to listen," Altuve said.
There's something to be said for a guy who knows when not to laugh or do stupid things, even in the presence of a president who's prone too
often to laughing while doing or saying stupid things.
Right now you can say Altuve's played himself into the kind of riches he probably never conceived when he first wandered into an Astros tryout
camp in his native Venezuela and was first dismissed because some bat-brain thought he was too short. (Once upon a time, similar bat-brains said
such things about Phil Rizzuto, too.) He came back the next day showing his birth certificate (he'd first lied about his age) and what he could do.
Last fall he showed the nation what the American League already knew for several years that he could do. And isn't it fun to watch a possible Hall
of Famer in the making* play the game like he hasn't forgotten to be a kid, knowing that he's going to be rewarded appropriately?
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*
Altuve is already two points past the average Hall of Famer on the Bill James Black Ink Test with 29; he's seventeen points past the average Hall
of Famer on the James Hall of Fame batting monitor; and, according to Jay Jaffe's JAWS analytics, Altuve is among the top sixty second basemen
of all time and striking fast for the top fifty and beyond.
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