About a month ago, I wrote a post in which I advocated for Chase Utley and Ian Kinsler to be the starting second basemen in this year's MLB All-Star Game. While I haven't changed my opinion on Kinsler as the American League starter, I am going to discuss Jose Altuve and his qualifications for this season's A.L. All-Star Team.
In short, Jose Altuve is having an awesome season.
He's leading all MLB players in hits so far on the year, has a stolen base percentage of 92.5 for the season, and leads qualifying second basemen in on-base percentage (OBP) and on-base plus slugging (OPS).
Alas, he's still not the best among A.L. qualifying second baseman.
Altuve's baseball-reference WAR of 3.2 falls short of Kinsler's 3.8. I don't know for certain, but I suspect this has something to do with his defensive WAR, a baseball-reference metric. While Kinsler is second among qualifying A.L. second baseman in dWAR, Altuve is second-to-last, with a -0.2 mark.
It's almost a shame that Altuve isn't better on defense. Perhaps I'm partial to a smaller player since I'm only five-foot-four myself, but Altuve is having such a very good season, I really want him to start for the A.L. in the upcoming Mid-Summer Classic.
Nonetheless, Jose Altuve is a very good player with very good qualifications. He deserves to be an All-Star, though not really a starter, and, with skill, he'll hopefully qualify as a starting second baseman for future All-Star Games.
**Note-All statistics in this post came from baseball-reference.com, except for the fact that Altuve leads MLB in hits. This comes from MLB.com.
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