Despite posting an underwhelming wRC+ of 97 and fanning a lot (26%) in his rookie campaign, Alvarez showed his plus power while his average suffered from a BABIP of just .222.
Francisco Alvarez made an impact in the majors in 2023 following a heralded minor-league career. The Mets had signed him as an international free agent out of Venezuela in July 2018, when he was just 16. After a solid campaign of Rookie ball in 2019 – in which he batted .312 with 7 homers, 26 RBI, and 32 runs scored across 182 plate appearances, with a 20% strikeout rate, 12% walk rate, and OPS of .916, Alvarez vaulted into all major top-100 prospect lists. He remained on them through the 2023 preseason.
After the “lost” 2020 season, Alvarez began the 2021 campaign in Single-A, where he did not stay long. He showed that he was ready for a bigger challenge across just 67 PA in which he hit .417 with 2 dingers, 12 RBI, and 12 runs scored, with a wRC+ of 227. He walked at a 22% rate while fanning just 10% of the time at that level. He spent the rest of the campaign with High-A Brooklyn, where the level of competition proved more challenging. Across 333 PA, Alvarez batted .247 with 22 homers, 58 RBI, and 55 runs scored, with a wRC+ of 132. Although he continued to walk at a healthy 12% rate in High-A, he did fan at a 25% clip. Although his work at that level exposed flaws in his hit tool and approach, Alvarez held his own as a teenager and enjoyed his first invitation to the Futures Game that season.
With Mets management satisfied with his performance in High-A, Alvarez opened the 2022 campaign with Double-A Binghamton. There, it was more of the same as he hit .277 with 18 dingers, 47 RBI, and 18 runs scored over 296 PA, with a wRC+ of 146. His strikeout rate remained on the high side (24%) while he again drew walks at a 12% clip. Alvarez’s contact ability definitely appeared suspect after he logged a 16% swinging-strike rate in Double-A after that figure was 14% in High-A. He was again a Futures Game selection at midseason.
The Mets saw enough of Alvarez at Double-A and promoted him to Triple-A Syracuse, where he hit .234 with 9 homers, 31 RBI, and 31 runs scored across 199 PA, with a wRC+ of 121. His average dipped thanks in part to a 26% strikeout rate as his swinging-strike rate came in high at 15%, but he drew walks at an elite 17% clip. His power output also dipped a bit in his first taste of Triple-A action as he was clearly acclimating to the new level, as his .209 ISO was his lowest since Rookie ball. At the tail end of the 2022 season, the Mets called Alvarez up to the majors for a very small cup of coffee. He made just 14 PA at the big-league level, batting just .167 as he fanned at a 29% rate in a tiny sample size. But he also drew a few walks (14%) and hit his first major-league homer.
Overall, his performance in 2022 was stellar enough to vault Alvarez into the top 10 for all three major prospect outlets. He came in the highest for MLB Pipeline at #3 while Baseball Prospectus put him at #4 and Baseball America had him the lowest at #9. There was some disagreement among the various outlets about his hit tool, which flashed plus potential at various points in his minor-league career, and his power potential, as it graded plus-plus raw but lower as an in-game tool. They generally lauded his understanding of the strike zone, especially given his age. With a swing geared toward generating liners and flyballs, there would be some batting average risk, but that tendency paired well with his demonstrated ability to make hard contact to all fields. Overall, they agreed that his bat was an above-average tool.
Alvarez spent minimal time in the minors to open the 2023 season as he registered just 19 PA before getting the call back to the majors. In that small sample size, he batted .250 with a pair of big flies, 4 RBI, and 4 run scored with a wRC+ of 150 while walking at a 16% rate, but he also fanned at a 42% clip. Injuries at the big-league level led the Mets to recall their prized prospect in early April.
Alvarez’s first full(ish) season in the majors was a mixed bag as he compiled a below-average wRC+ of 97. Across 423 PA, the 21 year-old hit just .209 but that came with 25 longballs, 63 RBI, and 51 runs scored while drawing walks at an average 8% rate and fanning at a 26% clip. He definitely showed off his power, as his 25 dingers ranked second among MLB catchers, but Alvarez’s contact rate (71%) was low as he especially struggled to record consistent contact on pitches inside the zone (81% z-contact%). His swinging-strike rate was high at 13%, but better than anything he posted since A-ball back in 2021 and he chased at a below-average (o-swing%) 29%. Alvarez’s 36% hard-hit rate came in slightly below average, but Statcast showed a healthy 12.5% barrel rate with an average exit velocity of 90mph.
It's worth noting that Alvarez’s productivity fell off as the season progressed, although there were some encouraging peripherals. In 210 PA before the All-Star break, he batted .238 with 17 dingers, 35 RBI, 30 runs scored, and a wRC+ of 119. In 172 PA after the break, he hit just .174 with 8 homers, 28 RBI, 21 runs scored, and a wRC+ of just .72. His strikeout rate ticked upward from 26% to 27% after the break while, encouragingly, he nearly doubled his walk rate, from under 6% to nearly 11%. He also elevated his hard-hit rate from 34% to 37% while ripping more liners (up from 11% to 16%) and lofting a few more flyballs (up to 44% from 42%). So, while the surface stats were down, Alvarez did show some improvement in key areas as his plate discipline moved toward what he showed in the minors and his batted ball profile improved.
So, while his rookie campaign yielded mixed results, it was an encouraging one overall for Alvarez. He displayed his plus power while showing improved discipline at the dish down the stretch. Alvarez made more hard contact, but contact in general remained an issue. Especially given his age and prospect pedigree, Alvarez is an intriguing player for fantasy in 2024 as he enters his age-22 season. His low average – which rode on a really low .222 BABIP – seems likely to climb next year, but in the meantime could help fantasy owners get him at a discount on draft day.
Photo credit: Casey Aguinaldo, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
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