A quick note before we get started here...I found out this morning that a friend of mine (not exactly a close friend, but someone with whom I spent considerable time over several years) died in a car crash on Friday. I hadnt seen or talked to this guy in years but for some reason it is really hitting home. I am not going to eulogize him here nor am I expecting any of you to feel sorry for me (though maybe for his family), but I am not confident that these are going to be the best recaps I've done...I'm kinda hoping for boarderline adequate as I am not thinking clear fantasy baseball thoughts. What I will ask is that you hug your family a little tighter, call an old friend whom you havent spoken with in a while just to say hey or tell your parents that you love them...and do these things every chance you get. My friend was a 30 year old who went for a drive on a Friday afternoon in bright sunny weather and never came home. We never know when our time is up.
I have really no idea how to transition from that to fantasy baseball so I will just dive right in. In looking through the box scores from our match ups this week, I was struggling to come up with some kind of narrative thread that ties everything together. Hitters, as a whole, were neither dominant nor useless. Pitchers were all over the board. About all I could come up with was the impressive line that Paul Goldschmidt put up this week, hitting under .100 (.067) while still having an OBP over .400 (.417). That is not something I would recommend trying at home. Then...then I came to Jose Altuve. Jose Altuve stole 10 bases this week. TEN...mutherfuckin TEN! And it is not like he went on a 1 game binge against late career Fat LeCroy (who threw out 2 of the last 43 base stealers trying to steal against him including the epic May 25, 2006 game where the Astros stole 7 bases in 7 innings, forced LeCroy into 2 throwing errors, and saw Nats manager Frank Robinson remove LeCroy in the middle of an inning). Altuve stole at least 1 base in every game this week and has 2 steals in each of the last 4 contests. He may look like a pudge 12 year old named "Carlito" and he may not be knocking any one in, but he is running literally at will...and he wants to run now...and now...and now. Just to put the 10 steals in a bit of context...the previous high in steals by a TEAM for a single week was 10 (now its 11...Altuve +1).
Only 36 players in the majors have more than 10 steals ON THE SEASON. Altuve is second in MLB with a .347 batting average and the player with the most steals that has an OPS similar to Altuve is Carlos Gomez...who has 13 steals. His combination of speed and BA/OBP/SLG is entirely unmatched in MLB. The lack of RBI and walks keeps him from being in the true upper echeleon of fantasy players (in our scoring format) but the batting average, runs and steals leave him in the next tier, and definitely put him at the top of the 2b rankings (at least in my mind...and Yahoo!'s. He is the #1 2b as of yesterday). It looks like the answer to "How many Altuve's?" is "Never Enough."
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