Let’s take notice of Jose Altuve’s awful start to the season

Jose Altuve is off to a terrible start at the plate in 2020.

The Houston Astros entered the 2020 season as the villains of baseball. Then the league went into shutdown and the Astros were able to escape getting harassed by fans the rest of the year.

But their villainy has not dissipated and plenty of people are still cheering for the Astros to fail. One thing that also remains interesting is to see how the team does at the plate assuming no cheating is taking place.

Jose Altuve won his first and only MVP in 2017, which happened to be the main year in focus with the sign-stealing scandal. His entire career is now potentially in question and his start to the 2020 season will excite his biggest haters.

Jose Altuve’s rough start is coming into focus

Excuses can be made given the circumstances of the season and the small sample size, but let’s just look at the numbers. Altuve is slashing .146/.255/.292 through 11 games. That comes out to seven hits in 48 at-bats and a career-worst mark through this stage of the season. The Astros are struggling as a result with a 6-5 start.

Altuve is a six-time All Star and a five-time Silver Slugger winner. He also had his aforementioned MVP Award in 2017 and is held to a superstar standard, or at least he should be by now.

So why the slow start? The conspiracy theory reason, which may not be too outrageous, is that he is struggling with hitting on his own without any signs being stolen. A more logical reason is that he is simply struggling in general with the late start to the year.

Altuve’s results during the rest of this season and beyond will be heavily-scrutinized. A steep decline from his All-Star level will raise plenty of eyebrows about the legitimacy of his entire career.