Astros Jose Altuve: HOH's Week 16 Silver Star Winner

We’re now just a week departed from the All-Star Break and the Houston Astros are doing what they do best — crushing it in the 2nd half!

The team that we saw going into the break versus the team that we’re now seeing post-break are as comparable as apples and oranges.

What we were previously seeing was guys that would get on-base but couldn’t convert and would eventually be left stranded.

It seemed as if nothing was going was going right but because of the talent of the roster but they still found a way to stay in games.

During that bad stretch of baseball the week before the break (July 5 -12) — where they lost six out of seven — they managed to only put 20 runs up on the board and being shutout twice — once by the Cleveland Indians and the other by the Tampa Bay Rays, respectively.

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Believe me, with numbers like that, I was ready for this team to take a break because I wasn’t liking what I seeing and something wasn’t quite right.

But fast-forward to one week later and it appears as if a lot of the issues that they were having are looking closer to non-existent.

This team is popping homers again, they’re getting on-base profusely and they’re finding innovative ways to score.

They now have 36 runs through six games after the break along with 11 homers to boot.

They have won five of their last six and it’s apparent that these guys are in heavy pursuit of the first playoff berth in nearly 10 seasons.

I certainly hope to see it — it will be a nice chapter to an already growing proverbial book about the revelation of the Astros’ ascent.

The title of the book?

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Let’s refer to it as The Jeff Luhnow Project — still far from finished, chapters continue to be completed rapidly as there continues to be something new to write about in regard to the Astros amazing progression in just a short amount of time.

But there’s one guy that will be repeatedly mentioned in the book that I speak of — from start to finish.

Because of this, excellence deserves to be recognized — today on that type of basis continuously, we will honor an individual player that made the most impact in helping the team, despite whether it resulted in a win or a loss.

We’ve dubbed it House of Houston Silver Star Award…

And this week’s Silver Star Award goes to…

Jose Altuve!

You know, I remember when Altuve was our only big gun, packing one hell of a punch with his bite-sized frame.

Now he’s surrounded by an immense amount of talent and this team doesn’t have to lean on him as much for offense.

But when he had a great week like he did, it deserves to be celebrated as he continues to show that he’ll likely be one of the greatest second-basemen to ever take the field.

I also love his Michael Jordan-esque tongue-wagging as of late, especially when he gets a hold of pitch that was set perfectly for him!

We called upon, he steps up to the plate and knocks one out of park.

Literally.

We don’t have to look any further to last night’s amazing walk-off homer by Altuve, resulting in a 5-4 win and the completion of a three-game sweep of the Boston Red Sox in their house!

Houston Astros Jose Altuve: HOH’s Week 16 Silver Star Winner

By Brian K. Patterson | Jul 25, 2015

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