Houston Astros<\/a> slugger is proving harder to put away than ever. And he\u2019s doing damage in them at a rate unseen in years over his volume of at-bats.<\/p>\nAlvarez entered Tuesday with a .292\/.358\/.559 slash line in two-strike counts this season, equating to a .917 OPS. League slash line in two-strike counts was .168\/.247\/.263, for a .510 OPS. Just eight qualified hitters in the majors\u00a0\u2014 including Alvarez\u00a0\u2014 had an overall OPS higher than .917 regardless of the count.<\/p>\n
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Alvarez led the majors in hits (57) and home runs (15) in two-strike counts while having the 39th-most such plate appearances, per Baseball Savant. Among hitters with at least 50 such plate appearances, Alvarez ranked second in batting average, to Arizona\u2019s Gabriel Moreno; fourth in on-base percentage, after Gleyber Torres, Ryan Jeffers and Moreno; and first in slugging.<\/p>\n
Since at least 2008, the highest slugging percentage in two-strike counts by a hitter with at least 50 such plate appearances was Mike Yastrzemski\u2019s .557 mark in the shortened 2020 season, per Baseball Savant. Alvarez awoke Tuesday on pace to surpass it. He was asked about the two-strike numbers Monday night.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just really go out there and focus on the plan that I have; I don\u2019t really change my approach,\u201d Alvarez said, through an interpreter, after the Astros\u2019 8-5 win over Miami. \u201cI just think about the next pitch and how can I execute (on) that pitch and I think the pitcher as well has to do their job.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Still, Alvarez\u2019s success in two-strike counts this season far exceeds any he produced before it. Alvarez had a career .194\/.282\/.345 slash line in such situations prior to this year, with his highest OPS a .696 mark in 2024. Per OptaSTATS, he entered Tuesday on pace to join Mike Piazza, Alex Rodriguez and Albert Belle as players to hit at least .290 with 15-plus homers in two-strike counts since pitch-tracking began in 1988.<\/p>\n
Astros teammates and coaches laud Alvarez\u2019s intelligence at the plate and ability to adjust between at-bats or pitches. Yet his above response invites the question of whether anything has changed this year with how he formulates\u00a0\u2014 or is putting into practice\u00a0\u2014 the plan he carries to the batter\u2019s box to produce that jump in results.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe best we can do is provide information on what we think the (put-away) pitches are, what we think that this pitcher is going to do against that specific hitter,\u201d said Dan Hennigan, the Astros\u2019 director of hitting and offensive coordinator. \u201cThe hard part for Yordan is they typically don\u2019t do their basic patterns and usages, so we have to sort of get a sense of what we think this catcher and this pitcher like to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hennigan, noting that it\u2019s difficult to know exactly what pieces of data or information Alvarez ingests for a given matchup, said there are \u201cabsolutely times where we have conversations and he says, \u2018I\u2019m going into this at-bat looking for this specific pitch.\u2019\u201d At others, Hennigan said, he believes Alvarez hones in on location that may be less inclined to invite chase against a certain pitcher.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think you\u2019ll see him sometimes truly, like, statue right out of the hand because it\u2019s just not the area where he knows, \u2018If I am going to go on this pitch, it has to start here,\u2019\u201d Hennigan said. \u201cWhen it doesn\u2019t, he doesn\u2019t budge. And he\u2019s so diligent and so focused on making sure that he stays on that, I think that keeps more pitches in the zone, even with two strikes.<\/p>\n
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\u201cSo if you have this high-probability area paired with a really good swing\u00a0\u2014 then you pair that with his ability to at least waste the fastest pitch and catch something out front on the slowest offering\u00a0\u2014 you put yourself in a scenario where you can waste ones they typically get strikeouts on and connect on ones for power that most guys are typically getting groundouts or rollovers on because they\u2019re too far out front.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alvarez is certainly not infallible with two strikes. Yet his 34.4% strikeout rate in such situations entering Tuesday was down from 41% in his career before this season, while he had homered in 7.7% of those at-bats, compared to 3.5% prior to this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s consistently asking really good questions, he\u2019s seeking information,\u201d said Hennigan, part of the Astros\u2019 three-man hitting staff with lead hitting coach Victor Rodriguez and assistant coach Anthony Iapoce. \u201cWe have a very specific routine for him before the game starts and he has sort of a setup where he can watch everything a pitcher does to a lefty while also getting his body ready.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe may have already looked at a bunch of stuff on that pitcher and he\u2019ll say, \u2018This is what I intend to do, what do you think of that? \u2019 Or he\u2019s not asking at all and (it\u2019s), \u2018This is exactly what I\u2019m going to do today.\u2019 And other days, \u2018I\u2019m not sure what to do, what do you think? \u2019 \u2026 If there\u2019s ever a time where he\u2019s unsure, we are ready for him. But there\u2019s plenty of times where we\u2019re just watching and admiring.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Entering Tuesday, Alvarez led qualified major-league hitters with a 1.083 OPS. His .324 average ranked second after Miami\u2019s Otto Lopez, his 33 home runs were tied with the Phillies\u2019 Kyle Schwarber for the major-league lead and his 75 RBIs were one behind MLB leader Jordan Walker of the Cardinals.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat he\u2019s doing right now,\u201d Astros manager Joe Espada said Monday night, \u201cit\u2019s in a different league.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Houston Astros designated hitter Yordan Alvarez (44) hits a single during the first inning of an MLB baseball…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":381722,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[56,58,57],"class_list":["post-381721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=381721"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381721\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/381722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=381721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=381721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=381721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}