How high is the ceiling for Astros superstar Yordan Alvarez?
By Jordan Shusterman
FOX Sports MLB Writer
It’s not like people have never heard of Yordan Alvarez.
We’re talking about a player on one of the most popular and talked about teams who has played in multiple World Series before turning 25 and won both regular-season (2019 AL Rookie of the Year) and postseason (2021 ALCS MVP) awards along the way.
This is no stranger to the larger baseball universe.
However, it seems like coming up with the Astros has been both a blessing and a curse for Alvarez’s status as a bona fide star in the larger MLB landscape. On one hand, debuting for a team that was good enough to go on multiple deep postseason runs allowed Alvarez to perform on the biggest stages and expose his talent to a national audience right away.
Conversely, Alvarez’s being surrounded by so many other excellent and high-profile players has managed to at least somewhat obscure one of the more impressive starts to an MLB career.
On Tuesday in Boston — a place where he clearly sees the ball well, given his historic ALCS performance in October — Alvarez launched the 73rd home run of his career in just his 265th game. That tied Bob Horner and Hall of Famer Chuck Klein for the fifth-most homers through 265 career games, trailing only the tallies of Ryan Howard (82), Fernando Tatis Jr. (80), Aaron Judge (80) and Pete Alonso (79).
It was also Alvarez’s 12th homer of the season, trailing only Judge’s 14.
His raw home run totals have always been impressive, but it’s how consistently well Alvarez hits the ball that sets him apart. This has been true going back to his epic AL Rookie of the Year campaign. The 27 homers in 87 games were jaw-dropping, but the underlying data — for a 22-year-old rookie, no less — hinted that Alvarez could be more than just a traditional middle-of-the-order masher.
Alvarez ranked among MLB’s best in average exit velocity (94th percentile), xwOBA (97th percentile) and barrel rate (98th percentile). This was a really special hitter who was about to take the league by storm.
Then surgery on both knees wiped out Alvarez’s 2020 season and left some wondering if he would ever return to his rookie form. He quashed those doubts soundly in 2021, picking up right where he left off and staying healthy along the way.
So far in 2022, he’s looking better than ever. Alvarez and Judge aren’t just atop the HR leaderboard. They’re also first and second in hard-hit rate in MLB (percent of batted balls hit with at least 95 mph exit velocity) and second and third in average exit velocity behind only Giancarlo Stanton.
These guys all have the right idea. Hit the ball hard, and good things happen.
Another thing that has set Alvarez apart in the early part of his tremendous, young career has been his ability to handle same-handed pitching. Drastic platoon splits can be common for even some of the best hitters in MLB, but Alvarez has thus far been relatively unfazed by the challenge of taking on the best southpaws in the world.
Since the start of the 2019 season, his .911 OPS against left-handed pitchers is tops among left-handed hitters with at least 300 plate appearances against lefties — ahead of guys such as Bryce Harper (.904), Juan Soto (.867), Max Muncy (.860), Shohei Ohtani (.853) and Matt Olson (.853). That .911 mark also includes a surprisingly slow start to the season against lefties for Alvarez in 2022 (.640 OPS in 50 PA), which he seems likely to improve upon as the season goes on.
So if Alvarez doesn’t struggle against same-handed pitching, surely a big lefty slugger such as he would be liable to strike out a good bit, right?
Not so fast.
If there is something different about Alvarez in 2022, it’s that he has started to cut down on the whiffs. After hovering around a 25% strikeout rate in 2019 and 2021 — only a tad above the league average of 23.3% — Alvarez has improved his plate discipline this year by swinging at fewer balls out of the strike zone. His 25.8 O-Swing% is down from a 30.3% in 2021. In turn, his strikeout rate is down to 18.6%, all while he has maintained the elite power that makes him a fearsome hitter.
If the whiffs continue to decline, Alvarez will become an even more complete hitter, with very few holes (if any) left in his offensive game. He will be a force at the plate for years to come.
Carlos Correa’s departure in free agency seemingly marked the beginning of a new era for the Astros after their infield core of Correa, Yuli Gurriel, Jose Altuve and Alex Bregman reached three World Series in five years. Correa is gone, Altuve and Gurriel are aging out of their primes, and Bregman is still trying to rediscover his MVP form of 2018 and ‘19.
But with Alvarez, another underrated 25-year-old star in Kyle Tucker and 24-year-old rookie sensation Jeremy Pena, it’s clear that the Astros’ lineup can continue to assert its dominance in the AL West all the same.
Jordan Shusterman is half of @CespedesBBQ and a baseball writer for FOX Sports. He lives in D.C. but is a huge Seattle Mariners fan and loves watching the KBO, which means he doesn't get a lot of sleep. You can follow him on Twitter @j_shusterman_.