Gonzalez, now the Astros\u2019 senior scouting adviser, discovered Alvarez more than a decade ago. He wrote him up for Oz Ocampo, Houston\u2019s former international scouting director who has long described Alvarez as a \u201chit over power guy.\u201d Alvarez\u2019s plate discipline doesn\u2019t get enough attention. Nor does his pitch recognition. The swing-and-miss that plagues other sluggers doesn\u2019t affect Alvarez, who whiffs just 19.7 percent of the time, well below the league average of 25 percent.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s a contact hitter with the most power in the league,\u201d Astros starter Mike Burrows said. \u201cHe can get to every ball. There\u2019s no cold zone.\u201d<\/p>\n
None of baseball\u2019s 168 qualified hitters have a higher slugging percentage than Alvarez\u2019s .663 mark. Twenty-one others are slugging at least .500, but none of them have a higher batting average than the .312 clip Alvarez has amassed across his first 202 at-bats.<\/p>\n
Alvarez is one of seven men in the sport with an on-base percentage of at least .400. The six others have an OPS lower than .975. Alvarez\u2019s is 1.085.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s not running into baseballs. He\u2019s just that good at covering both sides of the plate in any speed range,\u201d Astros right-hander Spencer Arrighetti said. \u201cWe\u2019ve seen it. It doesn\u2019t matter if you throw 100. It doesn\u2019t matter if you throw 90. It doesn\u2019t matter if you throw the best sweeper, best curveball in baseball, he\u2019s going to f\u2014ing hit it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Arrighetti is convinced Alvarez \u201cis the purest power hitter that\u2019s ever been, other than Barry Bonds.\u201d As a result, some in the Astros\u2019 dugout have begun to call him \u201cBarry.\u201d After a walk began the ninth inning Wednesday night and guaranteed Alvarez another at-bat, Arrighetti shook his head toward the Texas Rangers reliever who issued it.<\/p>\n
\u201cCongrats man,\u201d Arrighetti said aloud, \u201cyou have to face Barry now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Being mentioned in the same breath as Bonds is baseball nirvana, a state in which Alvarez seems to always reside. He is authoring the sort of season that will reignite debate about a designated hitter\u2019s place on Most Valuable Player ballots. Bonds won the award seven times as an outfielder.<\/p>\n
Alvarez has thrice been voted within the top 13. He finished third for the award in 2022, the season he slugged .613 and struck a career-high 37 home runs. Both of those benchmarks should be shattered this season, barring the nagging injuries that have plagued his otherwise prolific career.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s not just a power hitter,\u201d shortstop Jeremy Pe\u00f1a said. \u201cThis dude is a complete hitter and, when he\u2019s healthy, he\u2019s one of the best hitters in the league. His ability to just square up everything and hit it 110 (mph) on a consistent basis is impressive to watch.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt definitely does not go unnoticed here in our clubhouse, but I feel like in the league, he is very underrated. He does not get the credit he deserves.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, in Houston\u2019s 57th game, Alvarez became the fastest player in Astros history to hit 20 home runs in a season. His first home run tied the score. The second broke the tie. Both traveled at least 428 feet and banged off the batter\u2019s eye at Globe Life Field, where Alvarez has hit 17 home runs in his career. No visiting player has hit more in the venue.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a level of intelligence and calm through his at-bats that I have never, ever seen in my career,\u201d said manager Joe Espada, who came to Houston nine years ago from the New York Yankees, where he worked on teams that featured Alex Rodriguez and Aaron Judge.<\/p>\n
![\"Yordan](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/GettyImages-2277882034-scaled.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n Yordan Alvarez\u2019s home runs on Wednesday traveled 428 and 448 feet. (Ron Jenkins \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n
Alvarez has already missed one game due to back spasms, but presuming he appears in all that remain, he is on pace to hit 58 home runs. No Astro has ever finished a season with more than 47.<\/p>\n
After winning American League Player of the Month in April, Alvarez fell into a rare funk to begin May. He had just five extra-base hits and struck out 24 times across his first 86 plate appearances. \u201cTiredness comes into play and that reflects when I take my at-bats at home plate,\u201d Alvarez said Wednesday through an interpreter. \u201cThat\u2019s what happened.\u201d<\/p>\n
Perhaps, then, the back spasms that befell him on May 23 were a blessing. Alvarez had played each of the team\u2019s preceding 52 games. Espada gave Alvarez the entire game off on May 24. He has hit five home runs since. After the final one, Arrighetti approached Alvarez in the dugout.<\/p>\n
\u201cDude, respectfully,\u201d he told him, \u201cif you ever play for another team, I\u2019m not pitching to you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Such a possibility seems silly but has still been bandied about in early trade-deadline discussions. Trading Alvarez, who has two more seasons of team control remaining, would yield Houston the sort of prospect haul required to restart its competitive life cycle. It would also signal the close of this one, something Jim Crane has claimed will never happen while he owns the team.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile I\u2019m here,\u201d Crane has said, \u201cthe window will always be open.\u201d Whether the 72-year-old logistics magnate really views that as feasible is a fascinating question.<\/p>\n
That his general manager, Dana Brown, is working in the final year of his contract lessens the already slim likelihood of Houston dealing Alvarez. Why would an executive seeking another contract \u2014 one who has said he wants to \u201cretire here\u201d \u2014 make a decision that runs counter to Crane\u2019s longstanding claims of sustainability?<\/p>\n
If Houston enters a precipitous free fall, or if Brown isn\u2019t in charge at the trade deadline, perhaps the tenor of this conversation could change. Even then, it would feel far-fetched.<\/p>\n
Despite Wednesday\u2019s Alvarez-aided victory, Houston remains seven games below .500. FanGraphs gives the Astros just 16.5 percent odds to reach the postseason, but they are still within three games of first place in an American League West they\u2019ve long dominated.<\/p>\n
Alvarez is an integral reason why \u2014 and an irreplaceable piece if they hope to continue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ARLINGTON, Texas \u2014 Baseball\u2019s best hitter is sometimes miscast, be it because his home runs are mammoth or…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":670105,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[373,363,99],"class_list":["post-670104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-houston-astros","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=670104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670104\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/670105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=670104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=670104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=670104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}