Yordan Alvarez will start Tuesday’s All-Star Game as the American League’s designated hitter, and the case for him being there goes well beyond a strong first half. Entering the break, Alvarez leads the AL in home runs (31) and RBIs (70), while his .315 batting average trails only Tampa Bay’s Yandy Díaz for the league lead, putting him in position for a run at the Triple Crown, a feat no player in either league has completed since Miguel Cabrera in 2012.
The rarity of what Alvarez is pursuing is hard to overstate. Before Cabrera, the last Triple Crown winner was Carl Yastrzemski in 1967. Recent seasons have produced other near-misses. Aaron Judge, Shohei Ohtani, and Mike Trout have each looked like Triple Crown contenders at various points only to fall short in one category or another by year’s end. The National League’s drought runs even longer, with Joe Medwick’s 1937 season standing as the last time any NL hitter pulled it off. It’s a measure of how difficult the feat has become, particularly the batting average component, as pitching depth and defensive shifts have made high averages harder to sustain across a full season.
Alvarez’s power numbers have been the least complicated piece of the equation. He became the first AL player to reach 30 home runs this season on July 10, and he’s on pace to challenge Jeff Bagwell’s franchise record of 47, set in 2000. The batting average race has been the tightest of the three, with Díaz and Alvarez separated by roughly a single percentage point for much of the first half, meaning the final push for a batting title, and the Triple Crown itself, could come down to the season’s final weeks rather than being locked up early.
Manager Joe Espada hasn’t been shy about where he ranks Alvarez relative to the rest of the league, saying, “He’s the Most Valuable Player right now, as we speak.” It’s a case built on more than the surface numbers, too. Alvarez’s underlying Statcast marks, including a hard-hit rate above 53% and an average exit velocity approaching 95 mph, suggest the results aren’t a product of good fortune so much as consistently authoritative contact.
For an Astros team that enters the break at 47-51 and three games back in the AL West, Alvarez’s individual pursuit has become one of the few unambiguous bright spots of the season, an anchor to a lineup that has desperately needed one and a storyline that will define the Astros’second half whether he completes the Triple Crown or not.
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