Altuve continues to elevate his level of play

HOUSTON — Someday, we’ll look back and tell people we were the lucky folks who got to watch Jose Altuve play baseball. We’ve been reminded of that over and over in the first weeks of a new season, as he has taken an already elite game to an entirely new level.

He’s leading the American League (or is tied for the league lead) in home runs (nine), doubles (14), stolen bases (10), slugging (.664), total bases (79) and OPS (1.073), heading into Saturday. He has led off six games with home runs and is leading the Majors with a 2.3 Wins Above Replacement, according to Baseball Reference. The next closest American Leaguers are Mike Trout and Manny Machado (1.8).

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“That little guy at second base is some kind of player,” Mariners manager Scott Servais said. “It’s not a good feeling when you see him walking to the plate. You don’t know how to attack him.”

Maybe the mistake a lot of us made was in thinking that we’d already seen the best of the Astros’ second baseman. After all, Altuve won a batting title at age 24. How do you improve on a .341 average? Over the last three seasons, he averaged 201 hits and 43 stolen bases. How much better could he get?

We may have missed the mark because we did not really grasp Altuve’s burning desire to be great. Not just to be great, but to continue to get better — to hone in on every aspect of his game and attempt to improve it.

He’d done that earlier in his career, when he assessed where he was at after two seasons and decided he needed to get …

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