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I'm a little slow on the draw for the weekly awards this season, but better late than never. Each week we will, through the magic of small sample sizes, find out who are the best hitters the Astros have had over the past handful of games. There will be surprises for sure, as there will be obvious candidates. It is a good way to get some recognition for guys who may fly under the radar over the course of a season, but for a few glorious days are all stars.
Feel free to agree or disagree in the comments. As always, we will start with the honorable mentions.
Honorable Mention
Jason Castro
Speaking of surprises...
Nothing like a generally bad-hitting week for the team to allow Castro to rise to the top of these rankings. Yes, he struck out 21.4% of the time, but that was good for fourth on the team. Castro went 3-for-10, but more importantly his OBP was .500 as he drew four walks over the same time frame. This meant he was on base for the top of the lineup to drive in, which they did four times. Obviously no one is counting on Jason being the guy to drag the team out of their slump, but he did have a good week, as his .900 OPS would show.
Evan Gattis
Oso Blanco looks like he has shaken off some of the rust that was left over from his time on the disabled list. After starting slow, he turned it on this past week. The teams 2015 home run leader banged out his first long ball, and added a couple of doubles on top of that. His slash line of .313/.400/.625 was pretty impressive, as were his five RBIs. He still struck out a lot, but I don't think that will go away. As usual with this team, a high K rate can be overlooked if the power numbers are there (like a 180 wRC+).
And our winner is...
Jose Altuve
Who else could it be this week? Even with an 0-for-8 stretch thrown in there in Oakland, Altuve still managed to bat .273/.385/.682 while scoring four runs and mashing two homers and three doubles. Also, he is still drawing walks at over a 15% rate, and striking out less than 8% of the time, which means he is not sacrificing strikeouts for the power he is showing so far. He is being more selective at the plate and it seems to be paying off. This is obviously only one month into the season, but if he continues to show these same type of numbers, this will be an MVP worthy season for Gigante.