Alex Bregman, baseball's best sixth-best player

Alex Bregman had no other path. It was baseball or the imponderable.

The Astros' blossoming third baseman was born into the game, with ties that extend back to the Splendid Splinter himself. His grandfather, Stanley, worked as the attorney for the Washington Senators when Ted Williams was managing the team. Bregman's father, Sam, also an attorney, grew up around the Senators and later played baseball at New Mexico, where he remained to raise a family in Albuquerque. He also has done work as a player agent.

"My dad grew up on Ted Williams' lap, when he was with the Senators," Bregman said, adding that his grandfather helped arrange the franchise's relocation to Texas, where it has played as the Rangers since 1972.

The Land of Enchantment has not historically been a hotbed for big league ballplayers, but Alex's amateur record reads as if he were following a magically idealized map to the majors. Bregman served as a bat boy for his father's alma mater. He won USA Baseball's national player of the year award as a high school sophomore. He was an All-American at LSU. He was the second pick by Houston in the 2015 amateur draft. He won numerous awards during a minor league career that lasted less than two seasons.

Bregman's path has been as enchanted as the lands of his home state. It landed him in the big leagues at 22. It made him a World Series champion at 23. It's a good thing, too, because baseball was the only job Bregman ever considered worthy to pursue.

"This is it," Bregman said between spits of tobacco juice into a plastic cup. He's fresh off another long round of clubhouse cards, the Astros' never-ending card game that plays on and on from city to city, from spring to fall. "Since I've been about 5 years old, all I wanted to do was play baseball."

He's already fourth on the career homer list among players born in New Mexico, which perhaps says as much about New Mexico as it does Bregman, with his 28 career dingers. He can name one of the three ahead of him: recently retired slugger Cody Ross. The first two played long before Bregman's time: Ralph Kiner and Vern Stephens. Bregman's grandfather surely knew who they were.

Bregman has his best days in front of him. He's a career .276/.347/.461 hitter with slightly below average runs saved totals so far in the majors. He has a flair for the dramatic, as exemplified by his 10th-inning single that won the epic Game 5of last year's World Series.

On many teams, Bregman would be the great hope, the cornerstone piece around which a contender can be built. That's pretty much what he had been on every other stop in his baseball journey. Alas, in Houston, he is more of a finishing piece in the Astros' foundation, one that was well under construction when he arrived. George Springer, Carlos Correa, Dallas Keuchel, Jose Altuve -- all of those decorated stars reached the majors before Bregman. Now, because Bregman orbits in such a shiny constellation of young stars, his own rise seems somewhat obscured.

That's just fine with Bregman.

"It motivates you every single day," he said. "I think that's why this team is so good. Everyone wants to be the best. Everyone wants to be the best player they can possibly be, and they want to be the best player in the game. I think it drives all [of] us. I definitely use it as motivation to keep working to get better."

In the most recent ESPN top 100, Bregman came in at No. 57. That's not bad for a 24-year-old who hasn't yet approached his peak production. On average, that would make a player one of the top two on his team. It's a better ranking than such luminaries as Eric Hosmer and Lorenzo Cain, two of the highest-paid players of the most recent free-agent class. It's better than Daniel Murphy, Adrian Beltre and Didi Gregorius, an early front-runner for American League MVP.

Indeed, No. 57 is a good ranking, but in Bregman's own clubhouse, it will not turn any heads. That's because there are five Astros ranked higher than Bregman:

3. Jose Altuve

10. Carlos Correa

24. George Springer

29. Justin Verlander

33. Dallas Keuchel

57. Alex Bregman

82. Gerrit Cole

On the Astros, Bregman is but the sixth man. He is the best sixth-best player in the majors. There is no disgrace in that, by any stretch. But when you look at where Bregman has stood at pretty much every stop along the way, it has to be a strange dynamic.

"It alleviates a little bit of the pressure of having to be that guy too soon," said Astros manager A.J. Hinch, who first saw Bregman play during his college days on a mission to scout LSU pitcher Aaron Nola, now a burgeoning star with the Phillies. Hinch couldn't help but be impressed by LSU's shortstop, Bregman, who he recalls had four or five hits that day.

This season, Bregman isn't off to a blistering start, which is reminiscent of his 2017 pattern. Like last campaign, he's waiting for his power bat to show up in these early games. Over Houston's first 29 contests, Bregman had just one homer and a .361 slugging percentage while hitting .259 overall. It's a slow-ish start -- not disastrous, not inspiring.

"He gets extreme with hitting the ball in the air," Hinch said. "Which is a popular thing to do, but there is a fine line between popout rate and just making contact. When he's hitting the ball hard and not focused on hitting it far, he gets a lot of hits. He's still a line drive hitter, not a fly ball hitter. This season so far is similar to his struggles last year."

Last year, Bregman's power bat was slow to wake up. In his first 41 games, he had a lone homer and a .352 slugging percentage. The numbers look very familiar, though Bregman says there is no comparison.

"I feel way better than I did last year, that's for sure," he said with a shrug.

After those first 41 outings in 2017, Bregman turned on the jets, often carrying the Astros through stretches in which injuries left them short-handed. He hit .292/.354/.516 the rest of the way, with 32 doubles and 19 homers. His postseason was up-and-down, but he hit four homers during the Astros' title run and had that hit in Game 5 that few Houston fans will ever forget. If last year was an indicator, the missing power bat seems likely to show up soon. While we wait for that to happen, don't worry about Bregman's confidence. There is plenty of it.

"That's a good way to put it," Hinch said. "He will be confident tomorrow whether he is 4-for-4 or 0-for-4."

When the power bat does show up, it will complement Bregman's ever-expanding base of skills. According to Baseball-Reference.com, Bregman is swinging at just 24 percent of first pitches this season, down more than 12 percent from his rookie year. Overall, he is swinging at 37.6 percent of the pitches he sees, down 7 percent from last season and a full 9 percent less than the big league average. But he hasn't been passive: Bregman strikes out looking at about half the big league rate, and he has a contact rate well above league average.

"I think that this year I've done a better job of waiting for a pitch to hit," Bregman said. "Not getting myself out early in the at-bat."

The end result of Bregman's improved plate discipline and pitch recognition skills is a .380 on-base percentage in the season's first five weeks. As a rookie, he was at .313. He's also walking more than he's striking out, which in a 2018 context is kind of miraculous. When the power comes, Bregman will likely become even more lethal than he was during last season's second half. If and when that happens, it's possible all those other young Houston stars won't outshine Bregman as much -- or at all.

"[Houston's star power] doesn't mean he can't be that guy, even on a team like this," Hinch said. "He can still be really influential and really good, even though he's on a team full of really good players. It does allow for a slower ramp to whatever he is going to be. And he's got some good examples around him."

Despite his long-standing family ties to baseball, his decorated amateur career, his lofty draft position and his quick rise through the minors, Bregman doesn't seem like a star -- at least not in personality. He seems like one of the guys playing cards in the middle of the clubhouse. He shows up early and works tirelessly, traits you'd anticipate from a ballplayer myopically following the only destiny he ever allowed into his personal universe.

"He is a baseball rat," Hinch said. "He loves talking baseball. He doesn't want days off. You'll see him after games in the video room. He's baseball through and through."

There are almost certainly several future Hall of Famers on the Houston roster. Verlander is likely a sure thing. Altuve and Correa seem well on their way, and you might say the same about Springer. All have lots of work to do, but their careers are what early Hall of Fame careers look like. Bregman has even further to go to get on that track, but everything about his demeanor and his history tells you he'll make a run at All-Star status at the very least.

One way or another, baseball is stuck with Bregman for a very long time.

"I'd like to stay on the team side of things," Bregman said. "Maybe 20 years or 30 years from now. Maybe coaching or something."

If you wonder why the Astros are viewed as such strong favorites to defend their first crown, it's because of their young core of stars, of course. It's because of a lights-out rotation that has been bolstered by the additions of Verlander and Cole. But there is another layer to it, one that few title teams can boast of: The Astros have lots of room to grow from within. It is this aspect of the team that Bregman typifies.

"That worth ethic, that perspective, that commitment that he brings, it can be contagious on a lot of his teammates," Hinch said. "But more importantly, it's him. He's got to be himself, and at his level, the faster you learn to be yourself, the more success you will have."

What do you have when Alex Bregman is your sixth-best player? The Astros can tell you. You have a championship team.