Yordan Alvarez Is a Once-in-a-Generation Slugger Who Can No Longer Be Overlooked
When it comes to lefties who can hit lefties in MLB history, the Houston Astros’ DH is up there with Babe Ruth, Barry Bonds, Lou Gehrig — and just ahead of Ted Williams.
The Houston Astros have a fight on their hands in the American League Division Series, which is tied at a game apiece with the Minnesota Twins. But Houston’s unfair advantage is having one of baseball’s greatest left-handed hitters in the middle of its lineup.
Not just this season, but in the history of the game.
As the Twins learned in Game 1, there is no counter for Yordan Alvarez, the 26-year-old phenom and two-time All-Star who won rookie of the year in 2019 and a Silver Slugger last season to go along with a World Series ring.
In the bottom of the third inning on Saturday, Alvarez blasted a 1-0 changeup from right-hander Bailey Ober into the right-field bleachers, giving Houston a 3-0 lead. Later, fearing Alvarez might victimize another righty in the seventh, Minnesota brought in southpaw Caleb Thielbar to face the imposing slugger. It didn’t go well. Alvarez launched a 1-1 changeup off the right-field foul pole at 104.6 mph, giving the Astros an insurance run in their 6-4 victory.
None of this was especially surprising. Among lefty batters with at least 1,000 career plate appearances against righty pitchers, Alvarez has the 10th-highest OPS in Baseball-Reference’s database (.995). And among lefty batters with at least 500 plate appearances versus lefties in their career, Alvarez has the fourth-highest OPS (.947). In other words, he’s almost equally effective no matter which side the opposing pitcher throws from — and relative to other left-handed hitters, he’s particularly deadly against lefty pitchers.
Neutralizing Alvarez by playing the platoon game is a no-go. But what about mixing pitch types? Well, good luck with that.
Over the course of his career, Alvarez has added positive value relative to league average against every single type of pitch that is tracked, from 4-seam fastballs (he’s the 14th-best versus heaters since his debut in 2019) to changeups (fifth-best) and sliders (No. 1 since 2019). Among batters with at least 1,000 plate appearances over the same span, Alvarez is one of only 13 who have produced at an above-average rate against every pitch type for which they have a sample of data, joining a list alongside:
Paul Goldschmidt
Matt Olson
Rafael Devers
José Ramírez
Shohei Ohtani
Bo Bichette
Brandon Nimmo
Kyle Tucker
Will Smith
Anthony Rendon
Steven Kwan
Julio Rodríguez
Here’s a breakdown of exactly which pitches Alvarez has been the most dangerous against over the course of his career, based on pitch type run values:
Maybe the way to approach Alvarez, then, is to wait for him to get himself out — hoping you’ll catch him in a slump when his swing isn’t quite right, and capitalize on the cold streak. But there’s just one problem: Alvarez never goes cold.
Looking at Baseball Savant’s charts of Alvarez’s rolling averages over time, he’s only had one period of time in the past 26 months when he had a subpar weighted on-base average (wOBA) sustained over 100 or more plate appearances. And Alvarez has never had a stretch of 200 plate appearances in his entire career where he was a below-average hitter (something that could also be said about Ted Williams through his first 482 career games):
Alvarez makes the Astros more fluke-proof than other contenders. Not only does their best hitter have a 2.214 OPS this postseason — and an .867 mark in his playoff career — but when all else fails, he might take a tough lefty 450 feet to dead-center in a huge spot. Cue the highlight from last year’s World Series.
Despite being one of baseball’s best players, though, Alvarez is still something of a secret weapon — well known to opposing pitchers, but not fans across MLB. We took the top hitters in the game (according to WAR runs above average) since Alvarez made his debut in 2019 and looked at the amount of U.S. search traffic they have amassed over the same span using Google Trends. Among the 10 best hitters, only Paul Goldschmidt of the St. Louis Cardinals garnered less search interest than Alvarez, while others such as Bryce Harper (4x), Mike Trout (5x), Shohei Ohtani (6x) and Aaron Judge (9x) got many multiple times more attention than Alvarez.
Lest we think this is related to Houston — which is the U.S.’s fifth-biggest metro area but also carries a population 2.6 times smaller than New York City’s — Alvarez wasn’t even the most-searched Astro in that span, with Jose Altuve and Carlos Correa (now of the Twins, coincidentally enough) getting more than double the searches of their towering teammate. (Remember: All attention is good attention.)
Even since Alvarez led the Astros to a championship last November, his search interest still lags well behind that of his hard-hitting peers. Why hasn’t he gotten his due as one of baseball’s brightest stars?
Part of it could be because fans across the U.S. aren’t searching as much for non-American players; Alvarez has far greater relative search traffic in his native Cuba and in other parts of Latin America than in the U.S. (Along similar lines, language undoubtedly plays a role — Alvarez works with a translator when speaking to reporters in Spanish.) It could also be because of the quiet humility with which Alvarez carries himself, in contrast to the flair of other, brasher stars. He tends to let his bat do the talking for him.
Regardless, Alvarez is the rare hitter who can adjust to any pitch, from any pitcher, at any time, always staying a step ahead of the opponent. It shouldn’t be lost on anyone that Alvarez is a once-in-a-generation talent at the plate — and he is proving that yet again this postseason.
Filed under: Baseball
Original story: Yordan Alvarez Is a Once-in-a-Generation Slugger Who Can No Longer Be Overlooked