WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Jose Abreu’s hair has gotten longer up top, and his next gray one will be his first. He must not be getting older.
“No, I’m old now,” he said, a wry smile on his 37-year-old face, in the Astros’ spring training clubhouse, “but I still have the passion that made me want to play baseball. So I feel young.”
Last August, in his first season with the Astros, Abreu marked 10 years since his defection from Cuba. Soon, it’ll be 10 since he embarked on his rookie of the year season with the White Sox.
The grass was greener in Chicago back then. It’s got to be greener on the American League favorites’ side of the street now.
“But I don’t want to say that,” he said via a translator. “I obviously had a lot of fans in Chicago and they were great, and I don’t want to disrespect them. But I’m here, I’m happy here and everyone here has been supporting me from the beginning, so I think I’m in the right spot.”
Early last spring, the 2020 AL MVP still was stung by what he called “disrespect” from the Sox and, in a conversation with the Sun-Times, choked up while trying to convey the feelings he still had for his big-league home for nine power-packed seasons. Any tears have long since dried up. Abreu, preparing for the middle campaign of a three-year, $58.5 million deal, scratched the first playoff series victory off his career checklist in 2023. After coming up short against the title-bound Rangers in the AL Championship Series, he’s itching more than ever for a World Series ring.
The Astros appear to have gotten stronger, keeping their core intact and bolstering a star-studded roster with closer Josh Hader. More swings from slugger Yordan Alvarez, who missed 48 games last season, and more starts from 41-year-old Justin Verlander, a 2023 trade-deadline reacquisition, would go a long way.
Improved production from Abreu would, too. His first go-round with the Astros wasn’t his finest, not that his 18 home runs and 90 RBI looked insufficient in the end. But he started slowly and didn’t homer until May 28, at last ending a drought of 260 at-bats. When he finally got on the board, he sprinted around the bases and slid in the dirt in front of the dugout, popping up into a mosh pit of giddy teammates.
“A release of stress,” he called it, “but the support of my teammates is what I’m always going to remember most.”
At long last, José Abreu has hit his first home run with the #Astros. He rounded the bases at a sprint speed of 26.2 ft/sec and went home-to-home in just under 18 seconds, for those who are curious. pic.twitter.com/Xw4I5nZpTC
— Sonja Chen 陈星雅 (@SonjaMChen) May 28, 2023
Abreu was most productive over 26 games from Sept. 1 on, homering seven times and piling up 28 RBI. On the season, he hit .207 with the bases empty but .272 with men on and .275 — with a .906 OPS — with runners in scoring position. Get ’em on, get ’em over and he can still get ’em in.
In 44 playoff at-bats, Abreu delivered 13 hits, four homers and 13 RBI. That was tremendous and highly gratifying.
“I’m a person that doesn’t give up,” he said.
New manager Joe Espada says he plans to stick with Abreu at first base — as many games as he can handle — but one thing the Astros became concerned about last season, when Espada was Dusty Baker’s bench coach, was that Abreu might have been working too hard. Espada is encouraging Abreu to dial it back a bit with his pregame efforts.
“I expect him to be better this year,” Espada said. “I think last year he really wanted to show what he was all about, and he did that with his makeup and his toughness, but I think we can protect him a little bit more by being smart about his workload. … Sometimes they just think more is better, but sometimes less with better quality is the right amount.”
There still are hints of hard feelings toward the Sox for, as Abreu believes, forcing his hand to leave in free agency.
“But I landed here with one of the three best teams in the whole major leagues,” he said. “Every season, everyone says, ‘They’re always trying to win.’ I think the biggest thing I got was respect from [owner] Jim Crane and the respect I got from [advisor Jeff] Bagwell. You can’t really replace that.”
He’d rather not get into why the Sox’ perceived championship window closed as fast — and unpleasantly — as it did.
“I guess from the outside looking in, things might look really easy, might look really pretty,” he said before trailing off.
“I really can’t say why things didn’t work out. I don’t want to make a comment on it, don’t want to disrespect someone in that sense. But I think we all have the same goal of continuing to move up and trying to win. I have a plan, and I’m going to try to follow that plan to a ‘T’ to be able to have success.”
Milestone offensive numbers won’t ever define the career of a player who was a rookie at 27, but Abreu sits 47 RBI from 1,000 and 39 homers from 300. Nothing wrong with that.
“It’s a combination of all the people who’ve been around me since I came up, not just in the sport but my wife, my mother. One person can’t do it by themselves,” he said. “I’m very blessed and continuing to enjoy the game. Let’s go for more.”
