How Altuve became an elite slugger

Jose Altuve is getting a lot of publicity these days for the .361 batting average that leads Major League Baseball, putting him on track to pace the American League in hits for the third year in a row. That’s fine, to a certain extent; Altuve is a legitimate AL Most Valuable Player Award candidate, and he (with all due respect to Carlos Correa) has been indisputably Houston’s best player.

But to focus on that best-in-baseball batting average doesn’t fully do Altuve justice, because “getting hits” isn’t really the story with him this year, and batting average fails to give sufficient credit for the quality of those hits. That’s the real story — how, in his sixth season, a player who will forever be described by his (lack of) height has become baseball’s fourth-best slugger. Altuve is basically having the same season as Mike Trout, right down to the No. 27 on his back for an AL West team.

We’re not exaggerating that, by the way. David Ortiz leads baseball with .637 slugging percentage, followed by Daniel Murphy (.611), Kris Bryant (.575) … and Altuve (.571). That puts him ahead of sluggers like Nolan Arenado, Anthony Rizzo, Giancarlo Stanton, Miguel Cabrera, Josh Donaldson and literally everyone else. If not for Murphy, Altuve would have the highest slugging percentage from a second baseman since Bret Boone’s .578 in 2001. Even with Murphy, Altuve is running one of the five best slugging seasons by a second baseman since Jackie Robinson integrated baseball nearly 70 years ago.

We dug into this here at MLB.com back in May, tracing Altuve’s evolution from “decent player on a rebuilding Astros team” to “improving player on an improving team” to “superstar on a contender,” and at the time, the explanation seemed relatively …

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