ESPN MLB insider Author of “The Arm: Inside the Billion-Dollar Mystery of the Most Valuable Commodity in Sports”
HOUSTON — HERE, JOSE ALTUVE is safe. From the boos and hisses, the anger and loathing, the emotion his mere existence conjures. This man, baseball’s smallest player and yet one of its biggest stars, lives a binary existence. He is a villain in 29 stadiums. And then he comes home.
Here, in this proud and protective city, Altuve is not a hero. He is the hero, the face of the Houston Astros, the reigning World Series winners intent on becoming the first back-to-back champions in Major League Baseball this century. When Altuve steps to the plate in the bottom of the first inning tonight in the sixth game of the American League Championship Series against the Texas Rangers, the sold-out crowd at Minute Maid Park will rise and fete him — and with good reason. The Astros are one win shy of the World Series because of Altuve’s latest opus, a go-ahead three-run home run in the ninth inning of Game 5 that should burnish his legacy.
Altuve’s, though, is a legacy already written. In Houston, he can’t be touched; outside of it — fair or not — he is defined by the Astros’ actions in 2017, when they implemented a sign-stealing scheme en route to the franchise’s first World Series title. It matters not that several of his 2017 teammates say Altuve declined to use the system in which Astros employees banged on a trash can to inform hitters when an off-speed pitch was coming, nor that an analysis of regular-season games that year validated such claims.
How MLB handled the franchise’s scandal — the league validated the championship and opted not to punish the players despite commissioner Rob Manfred’s report twice referring to the scheme as “player-driven” — did Altuve no favors. He receives justice by voice box. The criticism never abates, except along the I-10 corridor from San Antonio into Louisiana and especially in Houston, where orange clothing connotes membership in a group that treats Altuve with a particular sort of veneration. Outside of it, the general public believes what it wants to believe.
Nearly four years after the breadth of the Astros’ cheating was exposed, the stain on Altuve is indelible. He lives with it — with the public perception about his involvement with the trash can bangs, with the charges that his knowledge of the system amounted to complicity no matter his level of involvement.
“I just don’t really have a lot to say about it,” Altuve told ESPN earlier this month. “I play for these guys, for my team. We have a big opportunity to win again. I want to put all my energy toward winning for my team versus getting distracted by paying attention to other things.”
Altuve’s ability to channel negative to positive reveals itself every October, when he is the undisputed king of active players. Following an atypical 2022 postseason in which he didn’t drive in a run, Altuve has whacked three home runs in these playoffs, all helping lead to wins. Among his current peers, he is the leader in almost every counting statistic: games played (101), plate appearances (466), total bases (211), hits (113), runs (86), singles (67), doubles (20) and home runs (26, three shy of Manny Ramirez’s all-time mark). The Astros’ current streak of LCS appearances stands at seven, one fewer than Atlanta’s major league record set in the 1990s. Another championship would further cement the Astros’ place as a dynasty.
Altuve is no small part in that. Since 2017, the Astros are 19-5 when Altuve goes deep in a playoff game. This is not mere correlation; he is the cause, and yet Altuve’s present accomplishments only further the vitriol toward him. The better he is today, the more it serves to remind of the past.
And so home games are Altuve’s respite, the salve on wounds that have not healed and might never. For 13 years Altuve has been a part of these fans’ lives. When October rolls around, the city coalesces around another march toward a championship, and everything is right again.
“Never gets old,” Altuve said. “As a team, a player, I enjoy every playoff game more. It’s about winning. Nothing else.”
IN THE WEEKS after the revelation of the sign-stealing scheme, Tony Adams sequestered himself in a room and went to work. A web developer and designer, Adams, born and raised about a half-hour outside Houston, culled footage of 58 Astros home games in 2017 and ran the audio through an app he created. Of the 8,274 pitches he listened to, he logged 1,143 pre-pitch noises. Some players were tipped on more than half the off-speed pitches they saw. Most of the Astros’ regulars were around 30%. Altuve was at 4.2%.
To Adams, now 57, the data did not definitively suggest that Altuve was innocent. Manfred’s report alluded to other methods of sign-stealing used by the team. But it was enough to convince Adams that on the continuum of Astros players cheating, Altuve was far from the most egregious offender.
That belief underpins the defense of Altuve by Astros fans like Adams. He understands the aspersions cast on the 2017 team. Like many others, though, he also sees the contempt toward Altuve as disproportionate to what the publicly available data suggests. Altuve’s refusal to separate himself from those with whom he wore a uniform — “I always say this is a team,” Altuve said in 2020, “and if we are something, we all are something” — only ingratiates him to his fans more.
“He’s the face of the franchise, and he’s so good, and he’s not going to defend himself,” Adams said. “That’s the way he is. I think he’s the ultimate teammate. I can’t imagine anybody not wanting him on the team. He’s taken all of this for the team. Never broke. Never got mad. Never wavered. It’s admirable.”
In another world, Adams’ brother likes to tell him, Altuve is the most popular player in the sport: a 5-foot-6 marvel, barely scouted and signed for just $15,000 out of Venezuela, who turned into a Hall of Fame-caliber second baseman. Since Altuve’s debut in 2011, he leads MLB with a .310 batting average and 1,819 hits, has whacked 200 home runs and stolen 293 bases, and ranks third in offensive wins above replacement behind Mike Trout and Freddie Freeman.
Because of this, his reverence in the Astros organization is unparalleled — though perhaps the same could be said about the rancor outside of it. Only three players on the Astros’ active roster remain from 2017: Altuve, third baseman Alex Bregman and right-hander Justin Verlander. As Astros players went elsewhere in free agency, the wrath concentrated toward those still around. George Springer, now with Toronto, receives the occasional sprinkling of heckles, and Carlos Correa, a Minnesota Twin, hears them slightly more frequently, but neither they nor Bregman faces anything close to the derision reserved for Altuve.
The booing of Altuve knows no bounds. Regardless of the crowd size, the score, his performance that day, he wears the aural disdain of those outside of Houston. And yet Altuve, still elite, bore the brunt and learned to play in this new paradigm.
“He does good when he gets booed,” Astros center fielder Mauricio Dubon said. “He doesn’t care. I think it’s funny. He seems to enjoy it, and [it seems like] he hits a home run every time they boo him. I really hope they boo him.”
“I hate it, because he’s a great human being,” Astros reliever Ryne Stanek said. “One of the nicest people that I’ve ever met. Humble, kind, obviously supremely talented and a very good baseball player, but a good human being. You never know walking into a clubhouse what a superstar is going to be like, especially in their prime. The crazy thing is he’s 33, and he’s got the second-most pumps in postseason history. You’ve got to be good for a long time to do that, but also you have to be on a team that gets there. And he’s a huge reason why this team gets there and has gotten there for seven years.”
That’s the rub, of course. Had Altuve’s play faded, had the Astros’ success dwindled, had there been some sort of penance for misdeeds real or imagined, perhaps that would have been karmic retribution enough — the comeuppance Manfred forwent when he traded immunity for players’ testimony during the league’s investigation. But Altuve has only thrived. Among players with at least 1,000 plate appearances since 2021, his adjusted OPS ranks 11th in baseball.
“He’s been the one that’s kept the window open,” Astros outfielder Chas McCormick said. “We’ve lost some great players when I was in the minor leagues and by the time I got up to the big leagues. But when you have Jose Altuve and you have Alex Bregman and Yordan Alvarez — I mean, you’re going to always be in great shape because those guys are great hitters.”
EVERY YEAR THE ASTROS make another October run, Altuve’s postseason résumé grows more impressive. Should Houston win tonight or in a potential Game 7, he will pass Yadier Molina during the World Series for the sixth-most playoff games in baseball history. Considering playoff expansion, Derek Jeter’s record of 158 postseason games is well within reach, especially if Altuve remains in Houston after the expiration of his seven-year, $163.5 million contract at the end of next season.
And for all the single-team stars who have landed elsewhere in free agency, Altuve in another city, another uniform, doesn’t seem right. His bond with Houston runs too deep. Together, they have weathered the lows and celebrated so many highs, from his three-homer game to kick off the division series in 2017 to the home runs in the final two games of the 2017 ALCS that ousted the New York Yankees to the pennant-winning shot off Aroldis Chapman in 2019. And yet even that pantheon moment for Altuve comes with a caveat: suspicion from those who believe the unproven theory that Altuve refused to let teammates rip his shirt off because he was wearing a buzzer to electronically transmit forthcoming pitch types, which Altuve has denied.
Manfred’s report said MLB’s “investigation revealed no violation of the [league’s sign-stealing] policy by the Astros in the 2019 season or 2019 postseason,” but skepticism toward the league’s efforts at accounting for the entirety of cheating across the sport keeps the buzzer theory alive. Nothing Altuve can do will quell the theories. His jersey will forever be like the briefcase in “Pulp Fiction,” hiding something mystical and important and impossible to truly know.
Altuve learned quickly not to rage against a narrative he cannot change. He prefers to write an alternative one at-bat by at-bat, like the one he had Friday night against Rangers closer Jose Leclerc. Less than 30 minutes after Astros reliever Bryan Abreu plunked Rangers outfielder Adolis Garcia with a 99 mph fastball that prompted the benches to clear, Altuve came to bat with two runners on and the Rangers ahead 4-2. On the second pitch, Leclerc unfurled a 90 mph changeup that tumbled low and inside. Altuve took that familiar hack — his left leg striding toward the plate, his back knee bending, his bat whipping through the strike zone — and sent the ball just over the outstretched glove of Rangers left fielder Evan Carter at the outfield fence.
“No. 1, he wants to be up there,” Astros manager Dusty Baker said. “No. 2, he’s got a high concentration level, because that’s what it takes in big moments like that: concentration, desire and relaxation all encompassed into one. And everybody can’t do all three of those things.
“And so, I mean, this dude is one of the baddest dudes I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen some greats.”
Altuve stuck his tongue out as the ball left his bat, a reflexive move that was as Jordan-like as a baseball player can get. Rangers fans, stunned at the prospect of a third straight loss at home after carrying a decided advantage following a pair of road wins to kick off the series, were too shocked to boo. All they could do was shake their heads, lament their misfortune, add themselves to the list of teams that had been Altuve’d in October. He ran the bases with pure stoicism — no bat flip, no Eurostep, not even a smile, lest he invite animus beyond the regular dosage.
“This team deserves the best version of me, and that’s being focused,” Altuve said in early October. “I think that’s something you learn through the years. Like you said, I’m 33 now. You learn, you get older, you get better at some things and you still have to learn other things.
“My team makes everything easier for me because they play hard, they love the game, they love winning.”
His team, his support system, erupted in the dugout and poured onto the field to revel with him, and 250 miles away in Houston, his city exulted, saved again by the player whose career they’d helped save by believing the story they wanted to believe. And for the 26th time in the postseason, the time of year that always seems to bring out the best in him, Jose Altuve rounded the bases toward the plate and touched home, safe.
NEWARK, N.J. — Simon Nemec hasn’t had an ideal start to his NHL career. But in Game 3 of the New Jersey Devils‘ Stanley Cup playoff series against the Carolina Hurricanes, he finally had his career highlight.
The 21-year-old defenseman scored an unassisted goal at 2:36 of double overtime on Friday night to give the Devils a 3-2 win and new life, cutting the Hurricanes’ series lead to 2-1.
In the process, Nemec, the No. 2 pick in the 2022 NHL draft, had the most impactful moment of his pro career with his first playoff goal.
“I was so happy,” he said. “Amazing feeling. It’s been a tough season for me, and that’s a really big win for us.”
A native of Slovakia, Nemec spent his first season after the draft in the American Hockey League. He split time between the AHL and the Devils in Year 2, thrust into action because of injuries to the New Jersey defense. He split time between the NHL and the minors again this season. Nemec has played 87 games in the NHL, with five goals and 18 assists while skating to a minus-17.
He was a frequent healthy scratch in New Jersey, including Game 1 on Sunday, and his lackluster play caused many to wonder if Nemec would live up to his lofty draft position. Nemec was last on the Devils in goals above replacement at minus-8.7, according to Evolving Hockey.
Thanks to injuries to defensemen Luke Hughes and Brenden Dillon, Nemec was called upon in Game 2 against Carolina and was back in the lineup for Game 3, in which the Devils lost defenseman Johnathan Kovacevic to injury after just 10 shifts. That injury, plus the multiple overtimes, meant massive increases in ice time for veterans such as Brian Dumoulin (36:29) and Brett Pesce (32:25), as well as more responsibility for Nemec.
“You just need guys to step up at the right times,” Dumoulin said. “He knew he was going to be going out there, we’re going to be relying on him, and we needed him. You could see that he took that moment. He wasn’t scared of it, and he took the reins of it.”
Nemec said the overtime goal, which beat Carolina goalie Frederik Andersen (34 saves), was the kind of boost he needs in his career.
“Yeah, it helps me a lot,” he said. “I feel like my confidence is back the last couple games. I’m just trying to play my game and do this stuff. I have to play offense a little bit, too, so my confidence is higher, and I just feel good about myself.”
Devils coach Sheldon Keefe admitted that he dreamed about defenseman Jonas Siegenthaler, who returned to the lineup for the first time since Feb. 4 and played 27:09, being the Game 3 hero.
“But if I was really thinking, I would have said, ‘Wouldn’t this be something if the young guy who just stepped up so big for us here, if he ended the game?'” Keefe said.
The message the coach gave his team in the overtime intermissions was one of aggressiveness. That apparently wasn’t lost on Nemec.
“We’ve got to go win this hockey game. We don’t want to sit back, we don’t want this game to go on forever,” Keefe said. “Credit Nemo with doing that. To have the mindset to do it, not just sitting back and conserving energy. He was on the front foot. You love to see it and love to see him get rewarded.”
Game 4 of the series will be Sunday afternoon in New Jersey.
Hagel will miss Saturday’s Game 3 in Sunrise, Florida. The Panthers lead the series 2-0.
Around midway through the third period of Thursday’s Game 2, Tampa Bay was on the power play while trailing 1-0. Barkov pressured defenseman Ryan McDonagh deep in the Lightning zone. With the puck clearly past Barkov, Hagel lined him up for a huge hit that sent the Panthers captain to the ice and thumping off the end boards.
A penalty was whistled, and the officials conferred before calling a “five-minute penalty.” After review, Hagel was given a 5-minute major for interference. Barkov left the game with 10:09 remaining in regulation and did not return to the Panthers’ 2-0 win.
Lightning coach Jon Cooper said after the game that he didn’t expect Hagel to receive a major penalty for the hit.
“Refs make the call. I was a little surprised it was a five, but it was,” he said.
The NHL ruled that Hagel’s hit made “some head contact” on Barkov.
“It’s important to note that Barkov is never in possession of the puck on this play and is therefore not eligible to be checked in any manner,” the league said.
In the Friday hearing, held remotely, Hagel argued that he approached the play anticipating that Barkov would play the puck. But the Department of Player Safety said the onus was on Hagel to ensure that Barkov was eligible to be checked. It also determined that the hit had “sufficient force” for supplemental discipline.
It’s Hagel’s first suspension in 375 regular-season and 36 playoff games. He was fined for boarding Florida’s Eetu Luostarinen in May 2022.
The Panthers held an optional skate Friday. Coach Paul Maurice said Barkov “hasn’t been ruled out yet” but “hasn’t been cleared” for Game 3.
“He’s an irreplicable player,” Panthers defenseman Seth Jones said of Barkov. “One of the best centermen in the league. He’s super important to our team.”
The Lightning lose Hagel while they struggle to score in the series; they scored two goals in Game 1 and were shut out in Game 2. Tampa Bay was the highest-scoring team in the regular season (3.56), with Hagel contributing 35 goals and 55 assists in 82 games.