Francisco Alvarez and the dreaded sophomore slump

As the Mets circle the drain at the wire to end yet another season, the drafts of various postmortems are inevitably being written as you read these very postmortem-like words. One of the topics will concern the Mets’ offense, which as of this writing remains in the top ten in baseball with a wRC+ of 110. It’s higher than last year, though a bit lower than it was during their 101-win 2022 season wherein they sequenced their way to the postseason and immediately back out of it with a listless Wild Card round elimination at the hands of the Padres. That 2022 season saw what was effectively an offense performing at an elite level despite very little power, while the 2024 version has been a very good offense with some of the best power in the league.

The rise in the team’s overall power was somewhat predictable with the continued blossoming of Brandon Nimmo’s home run prowess, the continued presence of Pete Alonso and Francisco Lindor, the addition of J.D. Martinez, and the revelation of raw power that was Francisco Alvarez’s rookie season in 2023. The 2024 Mets are currently in the top five in baseball in home runs and top ten in ISO, and all but one of those players has contributed to the power show in Queens.

Alvarez not only proved the naysayers wrong regarding his defense and presence behind the plate during his 2023 rookie campaign, he also proved that his slugging potential was clearly translatable to the big leagues. Despite his 25 home runs last season, though, he was more or less a below average hitter. His slash was .209/.284/.437 with a BB% of 8.0%, a 26% K% rate, and an OPS of .721. Although his .222 BABIP pointed to some bad luck, his 97 wRC+ pegged him as an overall net negative at the plate.

Still, that overarching performance from a rookie catcher was something Mets fans could certainly dream on as pointing to a future mainstay behind the plate and top-tier backstop in the league. As we head into the final few games of the season, and even considering some bad injury luck (including an apparent back injury during last night’s game in Milwaukee), the outage in Alvarez’s power is likely to be the primary talking point when discussing his sophomore season performance.

He’s not only aware of the drop in power, it’s seemingly been eating at him throughout the year. According to an article by Tim Healey in Newsday back in August, Alvarez stated:

“I don’t feel powerful.”

That’s kind of a huge statement coming from your power-hitting catcher. What’s more, hitting coach Eric Chavez didn’t mince words with Alvarez regarding his rookie season:

“I told him: Listen, you hit 25 home runs last year. That’s great. I looked at your year and I don’t think it was very good. There’s a lot of areas you could get better at.”

You have to appreciate the honesty in that assessment if not its frankness. Chavez has attributed Alvarez’s struggles to unknown “outside noises” and “voices” urging him to change his approach for more homers, which is as cryptic as it is frustrating. Specifically, it would seem that Alvarez had been encouraged to aim to pull more home runs to left field rather than maintaining a more well-rounded, all-fields approach.

The results don’t really bear this out, though, as his pull rate is more than 10% lower than it was last season, with most of that adjustment making it’s way to the other side in an almost 10% increase in the rate in which he hit balls to the opposite field. He has seen notably more sliders this year than last (27.9% versus 22.4%), but otherwise the pitch types and velocities he’s faced have been relatively consistent (though he’s of course performed worse against almost all pitch types across the board).

It’s all seemingly approach and execution leading to poorer results, which admittedly sounds as obvious as it can get, but many of his peripherals may in fact point to a change spurred by those “outside voices” even though the results haven’t played out quite as would have been expected (e.g. more balls hit to the left side).

Not only is Alvarez swinging at more pitches generally, he’s swinging at and making contact with more pitches outside of the strike zone as well as getting on top of them more with an increase in “Topped %” of roughly 4% from 2023 to 2024. Getting on top of the ball could point to that increase in sliders he’s seen this season, a thought potentially further supported by the increase in ground balls and the roughly halving of launch angle despite his exit velocity remaining consistent.

However, examining his swings/pitch breakdown for both 2023 and 2024 we see something that doesn’t quite bear out that way. Below you’ll find his 2023 breakdown on the left and the one for 2024 on the right.

As you can see, he’s actually generally swung less on pitches down in/out of the zone and quite a bit more on pitches in the upper part of the zone and outside of it. It would seem that pitchers have identified that he has a tendency to, or has developed a bad habit of, chasing balls up. Again, though, this doesn’t play out in the numbers in a way that shows elevated fly balls, pop ups, or “under %” (which is actually lower this year).

In short, and as evidenced by the eye test, Alvarez is just kind of a mess and all over the place at the plate. It almost certainly has snowballed on him as the season has progressed, and there’s likely a good deal of confidence-building that will need to occur during the offseason to get him back on track.

Even so, there are some positive signs in the form of improvements on some of those low numbers from 2023. While his walk and strikeout rates remain concerning, he’s seen an uptick in average and OBP in conjunction with a BABIP (.288) that appears more realistic than the .222 he was sporting last season. His .234 AVG would seem more in line with his power-hitting profile than the .209 he put up last season, and he’s had a slight uptick in wRC+ with a value of 100, placing him firmly in the average category (which is actually quite valuable for a catcher with some defensive chops).

Can we chalk this all up to your typical sophomore slump? At this point, I’d wager it’s more likely than not the scenario we’ve seen play out this season. Pitchers have clearly adjusted to him, and he’s been struggling to adjust back.

In the aforementioned Healey article, Chavez is noted as saying to Alvarez that “in a couple of years you’ll be the best-hitting catcher in the league.” If he can harness the improvements in average, OBP, etc. he’s had this season while addressing what ails him this year, that’s a very real possibility. Next season, and the work he does during the winter to get back on track, will go a long way in determining what kind of “catcher of the future” Alvarez is destined to become.