Mets’ Francisco Alvarez ends his home run drought in walk-off fashion
NEW YORK — Francisco Alvarez savored the moment.
Several seconds passed before the New York Mets’ 22-year-old catcher broke into a trot.
ADVERTISING
First, Alvarez stared coldly into the Mets’ dugout. He emphatically pointed to the ground. He shouted at everyone. He pounded his chest. Then he rounded the bases.
Alvarez’s emotions after hitting a walk-off, no-doubt, solo home run to beat the Baltimore Orioles 4-3 on Monday night at Citi Field matched the tone of the situation.
The Mets (65-60) needed the win. They held a 3-1 lead going into the seventh inning. They couldn’t blow it. It was the start of a critical 10-game stretch against three strong teams (the Orioles, San Diego Padres and Arizona Diamondbacks). Recently, they had failed to firm up their positioning against softer teams. They sit 1 1/2 games behind the banged-up Atlanta Braves for the third wild-card spot.
And Alvarez needed the home run. Carrying heavy expectations, Alvarez experienced a deep slump. Going into his final at-bat Monday, he was 2-for-his-last-25. He hadn’t hit a home run since July 26.
Four hours before the game and two hours before the team’s batting practice, Alvarez took swings on the field. Front-office special assistant Carlos Beltrán looked on from the cage as co-hitting coach Eric Chavez fed ball after ball into a pitching machine. Recently, such scenes have been common.
“I’ve been coming early every day to work,” Alvarez said, adding that he has particularly tried to home in on sliders and limiting chase. During a recent conversation, Chávez told Alvarez: “I just want you to be a good hitter.”
The point: Stop focusing so much on trying to hit home runs.
Alvarez showed he could be an all-around threat at the plate upon his initial return from the injured list in June after thumb surgery, but he has since drifted into a deep slump.
After the All-Star break, Alvarez’s offensive production plummeted. He entered action Monday with just a .447 OPS in the second half (fourth worst in the majors among players with at least 70 plate appearances during that span). Since July, Alvarez has hit just two home runs.
The problem can be attributed to Alvarez’s fixation on trying to pull balls for home runs, Chavez said — not any physical ailments.
Over the last few weeks, Chavez and Alvarez have worked on the field extensively hours before games. The coaching staff had seen some progress, though none of that had been reflected in Alvarez’s results until Monday night. Along with the thumb injury, Alvarez also dealt with a nagging shoulder issue in late July. For the season, Alvarez owns a .253/.318/.410 slash line with six home runs.
“When he first came back, he was hitting the ball the other way really well,” Chavez said, referring to Alvarez’s return from thumb surgery. “And then he started to get pitched inside. And then he got it in his head that he wanted to hit pull-side homers. So he started spinning out. So we’ve just been working on his direction.
“Everybody thinks it’s the physical things that happened — it’s not. He got it in his head or someone said something about hitting pull-side homers, so, physically, the body just responded to what the brain told it to do.”
It’s funny. Alvarez went to the plate so many times recently with the intent of pulling a ball for a home run only to fail, Chavez said. But when Alvarez received the green light on a 3-0 pitch from Orioles reliever Seranthony Domínguez, with one out in the ninth Monday, he said he thought about just putting the barrel on the ball.
Maybe that’s progress. Alvarez’s power is undeniable. He hit 25 home runs in 423 plate appearances as a rookie last year. But Chavez offered him a hard truth recently about the rest of the numbers: the whiff rate, lack of damage against breaking balls and more. He asked Alvarez, “Last year, you hit 25 homers, and did you think it was a good year? Because I didn’t. You look at all your numbers, I thought it was not very good at all.”
Then Chavez offered some praise: “In a few years, you will be the best offensive catcher in this game. No question about it. I’ll put my name on that. There’s no doubt.”
There’s just something that has to happen first: Alvarez must develop into an all-around hitter, not just an all-or-nothing threat. Chavez added, “I said, ‘When you came back from your injury this year, that’s a good hitter. You’ll learn to do the homers. Become a good hitter first. Homers will come, make consistent contact, hit mistakes.’”
Domínguez’s pitch begged to be hit hard and far: a fastball, slightly up and inside yet mostly over the heart of the plate. Off Alvarez’s bat, the ball went 421 feet to left-center at 106.5 mph.
“Alvy, he lives for those moments,” outfielder Brandon Nimmo said.
