It is easy to forget how young Francisco Alvarez is, largely because he already has such a veteran presence behind the plate, demonstrating leadership qualities from the day he arrived last year that impressed no less a demanding perfectionist than Max Scherzer.
“Alvy was so into it back there that I didn’t want to let him down,” the three-time Cy Young Award winner said after one start in particular, in what amounted to the highest praise any catcher could want.
And now you hear Mets pitchers like Sean Manaea and others talk about how much they missed Alvarez during his IL stint with a torn thumb ligament earlier this season, and you’d think they were talking about Yadier Molina.
“He’s just very confident in what he does,” Manaea said after throwing five shutout innings in Wednesday’s 12-2 win over the Yankees. “For how young he is, you can’t tell the difference between him and someone with a lot of time back there.”
Then you hear a stat that is a lightning bolt of a reminder:
As part of a 3-for-3 night that continued his raging hot streak and sparked the Mets’ rout of the Yanks for a two-game Subway Series sweep, Alvarez hit the 30th home run of his career.
At age 22 that is notable enough, but what makes it remarkable is that only Johnny Bench and Pudge Rodriguez hit their 30th at a younger age than Alvarez, and they’re not just Hall of Famers but in the conversation as the two most talented catchers in major league history.
Yep, Alvarez is that young and it seems all the more significant at the moment because he seems to be coming of age as a difference-maker with the bat, as well as his defense.
Is it a coincidence that the Mets are 11-3 since Alvarez returned from the IL? Considering he is hitting .415 with a crazy-good 1.232 OPS during that stretch, probably not.
That said, certainly there is a lot more to their turnaround to the season. It actually started while Alvarez was still out, going back to that now-famous players-only meeting on May 29 after the Mets were swept by the Los Angeles Dodgers.
They are 17-6 since then and the players swear by the changes they demanded from themselves in that meeting, in terms of being more accountable to one another and more committed to having a specific hitting approach on a daily basis, much of that at the urging of J.D. Martinez, the guy that Pete Alonso calls “a hitting savant.”
Yet it’s only the last week or so, and especially these last two days when the Mets beat up on the Yankees, whose pitching staff had the best ERA in the majors when this Subway Series began, that their hot streak seemed to take on a whole new aura.
It’s not just because the sweep of the Yankees enabled them to get back to .500 for the first time since May 7.
More to the point, in addition to stars like Francisco Lindor and Brandon Nimmo starting to produce in a big way, the emergence of Alvarez and Mark Vientos has felt like a transformative development.
Vientos’ power raised eyebrows Tuesday night when he took Gerrit Cole deep twice, and then it was Alvarez setting the tone Wednesday night with his home run and double that helped produce an early 7-0 lead.
It’s significant because it offers hope not just for this season but for the idea that maybe the Mets have a championship core, after all, for 2025 and beyond, something that also was starting to feel like a pipe dream when this team was finding new ways to lose every day for much of May.
Lindor may always be a polarizing figure, due mostly to his $341 million contract, and his slow start for a second straight season was reason enough to question his worth, but he has looked the part of a superstar shortstop since moving into the leadoff spot a month ago, hitting .303 with a .908 OPS while playing his usual stellar defense.
Nimmo’s resurgence has been important, given his long-term contract, and though Alonso has yet to get hot, he’s contributed enough to where it’s easier to make the case for signing him long-term than it was a month ago.
Whatever you want to make of the veteran core, it’s the youth that offers the most reason for optimism. Even beyond Alvarez and Vientos, it’s not unreasonable to believe Ronnie Mauricio will come back from knee surgery to become an important player, either at third base or second.
And it’s still too early to give up on Brett Baty, especially since he’s playing the part of a minor-league Babe Ruth again since going back to Triple-A. It’s hard to believe such ability won’t translate at the big-league level eventually.
Though it hasn’t been a great year for the Mets’ best position-player prospects, in part because of injury, that doesn’t mean they still don’t have high ceilings. And scouts lately have been pointing to Ryan Clifford and his blossoming power at Double-A as the most intriguing prospect to watch.
Finally, the Mets also seem to be on the verge of producing some high-level pitching, from Christian Scott, who should be back with the Mets soon, to the likes of Brandon Sproat, Blade Tidwell, Jonah Tong and others.
For now, though, Alvarez and Vientos in particular are what matters, the two of them brightening the outlook on the present as well as the future practically on a daily basis.
More than anything else in the impressive sweep of the Yankees, in fact, it was the big, bad bats of the youngest Mets that offered hope this is more than a hot streak in Queens.
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