SI

Jose Altuve Wasted Bases Loaded Opportunity With Swings at Three Bad Pitches

All three pitches were located almost identically.

Josh Wilson

Jose Altuve's swung-on pitches
Jose Altuve's swung-on pitches /
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The Houston Astros would win a thriller, 7-6, over the Los Angeles Dodgers on a walk-off home run Saturday, but it wasn't without some lowlights for the winning side. Jose Altuve, with a bases loaded opportunity in the bottom of the eighth inning, swung at three nearly identical pitches.

Seriously, they were all the same. Same pitch, about the same velocity, same part of the strike zone: Way outside. Pitcher Blake Treinen probably thought he got away with something here.

The bad-look at-bat would end the inning, but Josh Hader would come in to pitch the ninth inning for a clean 1-2-3 inning. Then, Bregman had the first at-bat in the bottom of the ninth and the rest would be history.

Altuve's 1-2-3 at-bat probably felt very bad, but that's the life of a baseball player. You're going to have more lows than highs, and it's about working through the valleys and staying consistent until you can ride the peaks. After a June where Altuve slugged .510, he's fallen to .387 in July.

A nine-time All-Star and a lifetime .307 hitter, don't expect Altuve to be down for too long. Don't expect him to stop swinging, either.

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Josh Wilson
JOSH WILSON

Josh Wilson is the news director of the Breaking and Trending News team at Sports Illustrated. Before joining SI in 2024, he worked for FanSided in a variety of roles, most recently as senior managing editor of the brand’s flagship site. He has also served as a general manager of Sportscasting, the sports arm of a start-up sports media company, where he oversaw the site’s editorial and business strategy. Wilson has a bachelor’s degree in mass communications from SUNY Cortland and a master’s in accountancy from the Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois. He loves a good nonfiction book and enjoys learning and practicing Polish. Wilson lives in Chicago but was raised in upstate New York. He spent most of his life in the Northeast and briefly lived in Poland, where he ate an unhealthy amount of pastries for six months.

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