I remember when Pujols came up and I kept thinking no way he continues doing this. He looked like a hall of famer immediately and obviously became one of the greatest hitters of all time. I’m not going to put that kind of expectation on Alvarez but boy this looks very similar.
Alvarez is getting into Hakeem and Earl territory, the guy is sick. The dude looks like a hall of famer already.
Are you kidding me? As someone who started watching Astros baseball religiously near the middle of the bagwell biggio era, I have never seen anything like this.
Actually we have seen this. Unfortunately he played for St Louis and terrorized us for over a decade..
Yeah. But I don’t remember his rookie year. I believe you...but damn Alvarez set the bar high why don’t you.
Yordan is on a historic pace and just makes hitting home runs look easy. Hopefully we find him a position to play besides DH so he can see the field against NL teams and in the play-offs.
How do the astros have the modern-day Pete Rose, the modern-day Chipper Jones, the Modern-Day Alex Rodriguez, the Modern-Day reggie jackson batting leadoff, and now the modern-day big papi, and we still have Brantley and Kyle "Hunter Pence" Tucker yet to be an everyday player. Wholly ****.
I saw a piece on sports talk that said Alvarez pronounced his name "J"ordan but play by play keeps calling him "Y"ordan. It's time to clear this up and get it right.
Looking at what Alvarez has done with his opportunity this year makes me look back at last year at what Kyle Tucker failed to do with his. Compared to Alvarez, Tucker was a complete swing and miss and was not good at the major league level. Rather than spend the time and effort in developing Tucker into our first baseman of the future, to me, it makes much more sense to develop Alvarez to play there. When we face national league teams and ultimately when we get to the world series each year, I want to see Alvarez in the lineup doing damage. It makes no sense to me to sit him on the bench in those situations hoping that the right opportunity comes along to use him as a pinch hitter.
After his first 72 plate appearances, Bregman was slashing .156/.236/.219/.455. Tucker has 72 plate appearances with the Astros and slashed .141/.206/.233/.439. Way too early to choose not to try and develop Tucker at first base. Also, I suspect the Astros are simply trying to increase his defensive repertoire.
What’s the point of comparing the two?Alvarez is putting up historical numbers that almost nobody else in the history of baseball has done. That’s not a baseline you should be expecting of anyone. Tucker barely has a an MLB track record. I’d temper the criticism for now.
This is a great point. What Alvarez is doing isn’t the baseball norm. Man, it’s been super exciting to see... But trying to compare Tucker’s MLB showing to Alvarez is trivial and petty. Each jump from one level to another is paramount in difficulty, and can be quite crushing without proper coaching. Tucker is immensely talented, and the coaching is trying to fix any holes in his repertoire; plus they are trying to make sure he gets his defensive prowess in full throttle. Alvarez it seems might just be a hitting protege who fell onto Luhnow lap, for a rule 5 project the Astros had tried to groom into a closer (Josh Fields name is going to be famous for what it took to pry Alvarez from the Dodgers)
His rookie year was as good as any other year he had. He was pretty much dominant from day one. I think everyone was relieved that he didn't get significantly better in his career because that would have been scary.
I expect Alvarez to regress, but from what we've seen, I don't see anyone in St. Louis have a better hitting season in their career in last 60 years than Alvarez is currently having on a per PA basis (min 150 PAs). Only guys I see on other teams better are Bonds, Mantle, Williams, Hazle, and some rando named Bagwell. This isn't just rookie seasons.
