Ever since the Houston Astros broke into the contending scene in 2015 after years of being basement-dwellers in their division, Jose Altuve has been a huge part of their roster. Altuve, the star second baseman, has been a driving force for the team for years; and throughout this period, he has endeared himself to fans, teammates, and even his manager. Just recently, Astros manager Dusty Baker called Altuve one of the all-time greats, while Alex Bregman mused that he wants to play with Altuve for as long as he could.

But it hasn't been an easy road at all for Altuve to get to where he is now in his career. The Astros second baseman may have won two World Series titles during his 13-year career, but he has also had his fair share of learnings brought forth by the sting of defeat.

In fact, with Jose Altuve having reached 100 postseason games after the Astros completed a 10-3 romp of the Texas Rangers in Game 3 of the 2023 ALCS, one lesson in particular stands out for him.

“That in the playoffs, a lot of things can happen,” Altuve said, per Alden Gonzalez of ESPN.

The MLB playoffs is such a different animal in that it is more of a crapshoot than other postseasons in North American professional sports. Baseball tends to be more of a game of variance than other sports; in the MLB, there are 162 regular season games for performances to normalize. But in the postseason, the maximum games a team can play is 22, which tends to invite more randomness, which Jose Altuve and the Astros have experienced firsthand.

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Even though the Astros have consistently been in the World Series mix, they have only won two championships since 2015 — and one even involved some sort of cheating using trash cans. The Astros have lost twice in the World Series during that span, suffering a crushing defeat to the Washington Nationals in 2019 and then the Atlanta Braves in 2021.

But Jose Altuve also knows that if he leaves it all on the line, it's an invitation for Lady Luck to stand by their side as the Astros look to knock the Rangers out of the ALCS for good.