Jose Altuve’s home-road splits are quite concerning

It’s not as if he’s knocking the cover off the ball anyway, but Jose Altuve has really struggled at home this season.

Entering Saturday’s doubleheader against the Oakland Athletics, Houston Astros second baseman Jose Altuve was hitting .206/.275/.317 (.593 OPS) with three home runs and 12 RBI this season. He is striking out a little more than he ever has (18.8 percent strikeout rate), but he is more notably not pulling the ball as much or hitting it with as much authority in terms “barrels” (as measured by Statcast).

All jokes about dugout trash cans being banged on and buzzers to signal what pitch is coming aside, Altuve’s home-road splits this year are concerning. He’s not exactly crushing it on the road (.262/.294/.415, two home runs, six RBI), but a .710 OPS and six extra base hits is at least not a huge hole in the lineup

Jose Altuve is doing almost nothing at home

Entering the first game of Saturday’s doubleheader, Altuve was hitting .148 (9-for-61) with one home run in 16 games at hitter-friendly Minute Maid Park this year. More broadly that home run is one of just two extra-base hits for him at home, with a .257 on-base percentage and a .213 slugging percentage going into Saturday.

Game 1 of the doubleheader is now in the books as of this writing. Altuve went 0-for-3 with a strikeout, to drop his batting line to .202/.270/.310 overall for the season. He’s now hitting .141 (9-for-64) at home, with 20 strikeouts in 73 plate appearances (27.4 percent strikeout rate).

Someone without Altuve’s resumé would surely have found a healthy helping of the bench at this point, but he has now started 30 of 32 games for the Astros. He has mostly hit second still this season (107 plate appearances now), so maybe a drop in the batting order would help him.

As for a game off to give Altuve a breather? That will have to wait until at least Sunday, as he’s in the lineup (and hitting second) for Game 2 of the doubleheader against A’s starter Frankie Montas.