Coming into the 2023 season, the Mets had some highly rated prospects who unfortunately were incomplete players. Known for their hitting ability, there were serious concerns about the ability of each to adequately field a position. Their names were Brett Baty, Mark Vientos and Franciso Alvarez.
Baty, who reportedly spent an enormous amount of time in the offseason working on his fielding at third base, never mastered the glove work, but did show some significant left-handed power. In 2023, Baty played in 108 games, batted .212 with nine home runs, 34 RBI and a substandard .598 OPS. He also averaged a strikeout a game. He struggled to a .956 fielding percentage, with ten errors in 227 chances. Baty was anointed the starting 3B for 2024, but his .229 batting average and .633 OPS was not enough to keep his spot on the roster and he was shipped back to AAA Syracuse after 50 games. Perhaps his very brief prior experience at the AAA level worked to his disadvantage, and while he continues to mash at Syracuse, he had looked awkward trying to learn to play 2B. Where Baty will show up in 2025 is anyone’s guess.
Vientos earned the designation as a AAAA player, a place trapped between mashing at AAA but not being able to carry that same talent to the MLB level. He too was criticized for not having a position he could adequately play in the field. In 2023, Vientos played in 65 games, batted .211 with nine homers, 22 RBI and a substandard .620 OPS. He played a total of 29 games in the field (19 games at 3B and 10 games at 1B) making four errors in 99 chances for a .960 fielding percentage. Vientos took a back seat to Baty as 2024 started, but since given a second chance, he has become a mainstay in the lineup and has held his own with a .978 fielding percentage. Much has been written about his major impact to the team in 2024 and with 24 homers and 62 RBI in 99 games (as of Sunday 9/15/24) it is clear that without him, the Mets would have been making offseason plans starting with a major sell off at the trade deadline. There appears to be no doubt Vientos will open the 2025 season as a mainstay on the Mets’ roster.
That brings us to Alvarez, the real focus of today’s article. Pegged as a can’t miss bat, he also arrived with great trepidation in 2023 that he was not defensively ready to handle the catching chores. They referenced his shaky defense, that he was not a strong pitch framer and his propensity for passed balls. He surprised everyone by doing a nice job behind the plate, but it was his 25 homers and 63 RBI in 123 games that earned him the starting job last year, and the expectation that at not quite 22, he had the chance to be a star for years to come and a mainstay at the toughest position in baseball.
There is no one on Mets360 who would have predicted that Alvarez, due to injuries and slumps would only have played 89 games (as of 9/15/24) so far this season and contributed only eight homers and 37 RBI. He was mashing back in June with an OPS of 1.123 but when he came back in July that dropped to .577. He bounced back in August with a small hitting streak, but then fell off the ledge again. By any measurement, he has been a major disappointment at the plate. But the saving grace that has emerged over the course of this season is how good a catcher he has become. He has a .991 fielding percentage with just six errors in 704 chances and while he still has nine passed balls, but the key factor is how much better the team plays when he is behind the plate.
The Mets struggled with Omar Narvaez and Tomas Nido who did their best to keep the ship afloat in Alvarez’s absence. Thankfully they are gone, being replaced by Luis Torrens, who in 39 games has a .257 average, a .732 OPS and has stemmed the tide of opposing base stealers by throwing out 13 runners (a 65% success rate). At only 28, they might have found the perfect backup for Alvarez.
The Mets have a .348 ERA when Alvarez in behind the plate versus an overall .397 ERA for all games. That’s nearly a half run better defensively. The Mets pitchers rave about his pitch calling, framing and how he takes charge behind the plate (shades of Gary Cater). Baseball’s Savant’s framing metric has him as one of the best pitch framers scoring around the 87th percentile in that category. According to FanGraphs’s total defensive rating, Alvarez ranks approximately 19th out of 94 MLB catchers this year. So it seems the Mets have their take charge catcher for the future.
What has worried most of us is that with the season quickly coming to an end, will Alvarez start showing his 2023 bat and help the team make the playoffs. He struggled through much of August often earning a seat on the bench in favor of Torrens who did provide some very clutch hitting moments. Then the calendar turned to September and Alvarez finally started heating up at the plate. They have gone on an 8-3 run in September, and Alvarez has gotten hits in six of those games. Included in that streak was a dramatic three run homer to ice an improbable 9th inning comeback against the Blue Jays 0n 9/11, and then inserting the first dagger into the first place Phillies with a another three run bomb on 9/13, giving the Mets a lead they would not relinquish. In doing so he helped the Mets maintain their #3 wildcard spot, and stay in reach of the Diamondbacks, Padres and ahead of tied with the Braves. Alvarez went hitless in the loss to the Phillies on Saturday and then rode the bench on Sunday as Torrens took over behind the plate.
It seems that Alvarez might just have found his stroke just in the nick of time and even when he is not getting hits, there is some solace in the strong way he manages the pitching staff. Alvarez will
be a big factor in these last 13 games and could easily be the difference between the Mets playing in the post season and making vacation plans.
And to celebrate this piece, he homered in tonight’s game!
If only it was that easy to write something and it happens. They need his bat along with that glove.