Yordan Alvarez is off to the best start of his career, and Major League Baseball has taken notice.
The Houston Astros slugger was named American League Player of the Week on Monday, his fourth career weekly award, after going 8-for-17 with three home runs and seven walks over six games against the Boston Red Sox and Athletics last week.
Through his first 10 games of the season, Alvarez has compiled a .400/.578/.900 slash line, reaching base safely in 26 of 45 plate appearances. Entering Monday, he led all qualified MLB hitters in on-base percentage, slugging percentage and OPS, and his 12 walks were tied with teammate Jose Altuve for the most in the majors.
None of it has come easily. On April 1, with the Astros and Red Sox tied at two in the fifth inning, Boston ace Garrett Crochet drilled Alvarez in the ribs with a pitch. Alvarez flung his bat toward the dugout in frustration and stared down Crochet as he made his way to first base.
“Obviously, I can’t be happy in that situation,” Alvarez said through an interpreter after the game. “A hit-by-pitch is something that can hurt my career and finish my career. Only he knows if it was intentional or not. But obviously, in that situation, I can’t be happy with it.”
The HBP was a scare for a team that watched Alvarez play in only 48 games last season due to a hand injury and a late-season ankle sprain. The Astros have managed him carefully this year, starting him at designated hitter in eight of his first 10 games to limit the risk of injury. A trainer visited during the Crochet incident, but Alvarez was fine and has not missed a game since.
The award is a reflection of an approach as much as a stat line. The Astros overhauled their offensive philosophy this offseason, adding new hitting coaches and an offensive coordinator with an emphasis on working counts and drawing walks. The team drew 50 walks in its first nine games, averaging 5.6 per game compared to 2.9 last season, and Alvarez has been the standard-bearer for that approach, combining his trademark power with a patience at the plate that has made him nearly impossible to pitch to.
It is only 10 games, and no one is printing ballots yet. But Alvarez has carried a career .298 average and .966 OPS into this season, and his Statcast numbers through the early going—first in expected weighted on-base average among qualified hitters, second in expected slugging—suggest the production is real. The last time a designated hitter won the American League MVP was Shohei Ohtani, and the circumstances were unique. If Alvarez stays healthy and keeps hitting like this, that conversation is going to get louder as the summer arrives.
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Photo by Ken Lund (Flickr), CC BY-SA 2.0.