I don't talk to anyone about baseball
I just saw this screenshot in the wild, and my little goblin learning mind demanded to understand enough about baseball to appropriately recognize what this meant. I have researched Altuve's stats on baseball-reference.com now and I am agog, but I don't think anybody I know will care.
I'm just completely amazed. In baseball there's something called a batting order; since the 1890s it's been a requirement of regulations of major league baseball that each team captain determine their batting order and keep it fixed (except for substitutions) throughout the entire game. It's a list of the 9 players on the main team, in the order in which they will go to the home plate to bat against the pitcher of the opposing team. The 1st position is the starter, the 4th position is called "The Cleanup" (because if the first three batters each get on base, the fourth is in a prime position to force between 1 and 4 scores if they make a good hit), and so on. The first three in the batting order are usually good, the best batter should be fourth, then two more good batters in 5th and 6th, and you can afford to put your weakest batters in 7, 8, and 9th of the batting order, because they're statistically a bit less likely to get to at bat until part way through the game.
The game of Baseball is divided up into 9 "Innings", where there is a top and a bottom to each inning. In the game on September 5th, 2023, when Jose hit these three homers, the Astros, his team, played offense by batting in the top of each inning, and the Rangers played defense in the top. Vice versa, the Rangers played offense in the bottom, and the Astros played defense in the bottom.
When the top of the first inning begins, the Rangers put their team out to their respective positions in the infield and outfield, and the Astros put their batters up according to their batting order. The pitcher was Nathan Eovaldi, and Jose was the first batter for the Astros. The defending team can get the offensive players "Out" in a variety of ways, either through strikeout while they're at the plate, or tagging them with a live ball while they're not on base, after they've left home plate, or the third main way that outs will occur is if a fielder catches the ball after the batter hit it. If it doesn't hit the ground, the batter is out, no question.
The innings change from top to bottom, and back to top for the next inning, each time the current defenders get 3 Outs. The batters show up to bat in the batting order, and whoever was on deck to bat next, if the inning changes, that batter becomes the first batter the next time their team is on offense. Meaning, if five batters get to bat before the defenders get their 3rd Out, whoever was sixth in the batting order will bat first the next time his team is on offense, and it'll proceed like that and then loop back to the 1st batter after the 9th. If every player in the batting order gets to bat before the opposing team gets a 3rd Out, and it loops back around in a single inning, that's called "Batting around." While it's statistically unlikely, it's possible in the game of Baseball for the offensive team to simply run through their batters an arbitrary number of times in a single inning, securing an arbitrary number of points. It's up to the defense to get their outs and stop the punishment. On the fifth of September, 2023, the Rangers did their best, but it wasn't good enough.
So Jose Altuve goes up to bat, first pitch of the game, and he secures a homer on the fifth throw of his at-bat, Nathan Eovaldi pitching. The crowd goes wild. A homer on the first batter doesn't have the same pizzazz as if the bases were loaded, or you had any runners on base, but it's still pretty sweet; homerun balls are going really fucking far, and it is not trivial to hit the pitch well enough to land one.
Before the third Out of the top of the 1st Inning, 8 of the 9 players for the Astros will have been at bat, and they secured three runs by the last play. That's the power of a good team working well together to contribute to Jose Altuve's majestic triple homer game. However, a very significant contribution to this statistic being possible is the actions of Framber Valdez, a 30-year-old from Dominican Republic, pitching for the Astros since his MLB debut in 2018.
We transition to the bottom of the 1st Inning, Framber takes the pitcher's mound, and he gets two straight Strikeouts on the 1st and 2nd batters for the Rangers, followed by a third Out on the 3rd batter. The bottom of the inning is over with no runs for the Rangers, and only their first three batters got to bat.
Top of the 2nd Inning, Nathan Eovaldi gets a Strikeout on the 9th batter for the Astros, Martin Maldonado. Then Jose Altuve takes his second at-bat of the game and sinks ANOTHER HOMER. The score is 4-0 (Astros v. Rangers) and only three of the Texas Rangers have even been able to bat.
After suffering this humiliation, Eovaldi, who has just returned to the field for this game after being out for an injury (WHO ALSO WAS THE PITCHER FOR THE DECISIVE GAME THAT WON THE RANGERS THE 2023 WORLD SERIES O_O), is relieved by Dane Dunning coming in to pitch for the rest of the inning. Eovaldi has been off of the field for half of July and all of August while recovering. This man has crushed it at times, apparently, but he's having a really rough return against the punishment being dealt out by the Astros.
Against Dunning, the Astros get six more at-bats in the top of the second, making for a total of eight at-bats. Jose Abreu does a nice hit when the bases are loaded, getting Jeremy Pena and Alex Bregman in to score, and then Dunning and the Rangers get their third Out on Chas McCormick's at-bat. He's number 7 in the batting order. There's only the 8th and 9th in line ahead of Jose Altuve when we go to the bottom of the 2nd Inning.
Framber Valdez returns and he brings the pain. He gets a ground out on the Ranger's 4th batter, Adolis Garcia. Then their 5th batter, Mitch Garver, gets on base at 1st with a decent hit. The Astros sink him and the 6th batter in a double play, using the same live ball to tag each of them, after that batter, Robbie Grossman, hits a grounder. Three Outs, only the 4th, 5th, and 6th got at bat.
We're back to Astros on offense at the top of the 3rd Inning. 8th Batter for the Astros, Mauricio Dubon hits the ball and stops at 1st Base. Then Martin Maldonado comes back and hits a homer of his own! Maldonado and Dubon both score. The 9th batter has had his second at-bat, which means in the top of the 3rd inning, Jose Altuve takes his third at-bat, and it's a brief exchange with Dane Dunning before he hits his third consecutive homerun. The other team has barely been permitted to play offense against the Astros, and Altuve reliably hit the ball like a god every time he got to bat.
So yeah, it's a really neat game, if you like to see one team totally dominate another one. And big ups to Altuve, but also big ups to Valdez for making it possible.
