The Launch Angle

The face of the franchise, the face of success, and quite honestly, the face of everything good that the Houston Astros have brought to Astros fans over the last 15 years, Jose Altuve makes his Spring Training debut against the Washington Nationals today.

Tonight, actually. It’s primetime! Well, it’s primetime for a state where a large portion of the population considers 4 p.m. “dinnertime”: It’s a 6:05 pm start time locally in Florida. Sunset in West Palm Beach is at 6:20 pm, so it’s still accurate to say Jose Altuve will being playing under the lights.

Altuve had a middling 2025 offensively. His 112 OPS+ represented his lowest mark since an 89 OPS+ in 2013, when the Astros lost a franchise record 111 games. At this point of his career, he’s on the wrong end of the aging curve, but still has the capacity to be productive bat in the lineup, but his days of being a complete gamechanger offensively are probably behind him.

He’s baffling as a hitter. When you look at all 5’5″ of him (listed at 5’6″, but who are we kidding?) , he doesn’t look like someone who can do it before he does it. When he’s at bat and chasing those low and away pitches, he doesn’t look like someone who can do it while he’s doing it. But then he does it all the time, and it’s wonderful.

This is a 3 time batting champion with a career 131 OPS+, an MVP, and 7 Silver Sluggers, and yet even in his prime, it was kind of amusing that while his teammates admired and were in awe of him, he was never the go-to guy for hitting advice; that was always Michael Brantley. Because what Altuve does probably works for him and for him alone.

Then there’s his baserunning. Which doesn’t work for him, and frankly never has. Affectionally nicknamed “Altootblan”, Jose Altuve was never good at baserunning, even when he was “good” at baserunning, winning stolen bases titles. In 2016, Jose Altuve was entering the prime of his career and fresh off 2 AL stolen base titles. But these were also years he consistently led the majors in TOOTBLANS (Thrown out on the basepaths like a nincompoop), and in 2016 after starting the season 18 for 19 in stolen base attempts, he was still found to be one of the most detrimental baserunners in baseball by a Fangraphs analysis.

Finally, there’s his defense. Last year, he began playing left field to alleviate a crowded infield, and because Altuve’s once gold-glove defense at second base had deteriorated with age to the point where he was more of a defensive liability there. He didn’t play left field particularly well, and by the second half of the season he was primarily DH’ing or back at second base.

This year, manager Joe Espada has stated Altuve will go back to predominantly playing second base. There is hope that returning him to second base will provide some consistency for him, that will carry over to his offensive play. This is a tricky situation to navigate, Altuve’s bat is going to be critical to the success of the 2026 Astros, but the fact remains that as bad as he was in left field, he was less detrimental to the team as really bad left fielder than as a bad second baseman. On top of that, the 2026 Astros infield is even more crowded than it was last year, as TLA Editor Cody Poage has written about (“The Infield Logjam Continues”).

But one thing about Jose Altuve is not in question. He is and will always remain a favorite of many Astros fans, this author included. As great a baseball player as he is, he is an even better human being, making him is incredibly easy to cheer for. The days where Jose Altuve is not in the lineup, I find myself just a little less interested in the game.

So Friday night primetime Spring Training Astros game with Altuve in the lineup, you have my attention and my interest.

Lance McCullers Jr. starts for the Astros, fighting for a rotation and roster spot. Miles Mikolas takes the mound for the Nationals.

There is no television broadcast of the game, something that I railed upon in yesterday’s post, but TLA readers discovered that that doesn’t necessarily mean there isn’t video. At least for games at West Palm Beach at the Astros’ and Nationals’ shared facility, live video streams are available from fixed camera high above home plate for a whole field view. It’s accompanied by the radio broadcast for audio. It’s not the greatest way to watch; you’re making a smallest guy in baseball even smaller with this Uecker seats view, but as Babakanush said in yesterday’s Discord game chat: “It’s… not nothing.”

To get the video live stream of the game, visit https://www.mlb.com/live-stream-games , and select the Astros-Nationals game as gametime approaches at 6:05 ET/5:05 CT.

Edit: here’s the video link : https://www.mlb.com/astros/video/spring-training-hou-wsh-194603

So come join your fellow TLA readers in watching and discussing the game, by joining the Launch Angle’s discord server! Just use this link to join: https://discord.gg/xgyxKZXX. For those of you who have participated in gamethreads at other site(s) in the past, you’ll probably recognize some familiar names and fellow Astros fans. (Just please say hello once you join, so we know you’re not a bot. )

Or post in the comments!

Go Altuve! Go Stros!

(Feature photo courtesy Pixel Pete.)