With 100 games left in the regular season, Francisco Alvarez is on the short list of legitimate National League Rookie of the Year candidates and already on the verge of becoming the most prolific rookie catcher in New York Mets history.
Alvarez — who enters Wednesday with +750 odds of winning the Rookie of the Year at DraftKings, second in the NL behind Arizona Diamondbacks outfielder Corbin Carroll (+105) — has eight homers in his first 38 games, which ranks second among Mets rookie backstops behind Travis d’Arnaud’s 13 homers in 2014.
Alvarez actually has nine career homers after going deep once in 12 at-bats in a late-season cameo last year.
Alvarez has an OPS+ of 113 and a slugging percentage of .492 this season, each of which would be the highest by any Mets rookie catcher with at least 100 at-bats. His 0.9 in WAR, per Baseball-Reference, leaves him just behind Vance Wilson (2002) and Kevin Plawecki (2015), each of whom finished at 1.0 WAR. And Alvarez’s 14 extra-base hits already rank sixth while his 19 RBIs rank ninth.
He has also generated 0.4 in defensive WAR per Baseball-Reference, tied for ninth most among rookie catchers in team history and within range of Plawecki’s franchise record of 1.2.
Alvarez’s work behind the plate — produced as Major League Baseball begins the process of lessening a catcher’s impact on defense — and his ability to guide a staff that includes Cy Young Award winners and surefire Hall of Famers Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander as well as 106-game winner Carlos Carrasco and ghost fork-throwing Japanese rookie Kodai Senga is arguably the most impressive part of his rookie season.
“Just kind of got that ‘it’ factor to him.” Scherzer said following his start last Thursday. “He’s got a good head on his shoulders, too, for being a young kid (and) of wanting to learn. And we’ve got a great clubhouse — enough veterans here to learn from.”
The words from the demanding but supportive Scherzer also underline how Alvarez doesn’t have to win the NL Rookie of the Year to represent a seismic change in how the Mets handle their prospects.
If they weren’t subjected to an unusual amount of misfortune, the Mets’ biggest prospects have been mishandled and/or misjudged by the team since it was scarred by the off-field troubles endured by Darryl Strawberry and Dwight Gooden after their Rookie of the Year-winning seasons in 1983 and 1984.
The Mets have had just five players place in the top three in the Rookie of the Year balloting since Gooden won the award. Kevin Mitchell, a third-place finisher as a utilityman in 1986, was traded following the season because management thought he was a bad influence on Gooden and Strawberry. He won the NL Most Valuable Player award in 1989, when he led the San Francisco Giants to the World Series.
Gregg Jefferies, a two-time Baseball America Minor League Player of the Year who debuted with the Mets as a 20-year-old in 1987, might have been the biggest prospect of the pre-Internet era.
But after receiving Rookie of the Year votes while still maintaining his rookie eligibility in 1988, Jefferies — a contact hitter without a real position on defense — struggled with his first extended taste in the majors while being tormented by the Mets’ hard-living veterans in 1989, when he finished third in the balloting. Jefferies continued struggling, on the field and in the locker room, until he was traded to the Kansas City Royals following the 1991 season.
The “Generation K” pitching trio of Jason Isringhausen, Bill Pulsipher and Paul Wilson were supposed to steer the Mets back to contention in the mid-to-late ‘90s. They were also part of the last generation in which pitching prospects were immediately handed a veteran’s workload and combined for 12 120-pitch efforts and three Tommy John surgeries by the turn of the century.
Outfielder Jay Payton, a first-round pick in 1994 who underwent two Tommy John surgeries as a minor leaguer, finished third in the balloting as a 27-year-old in 2000.
The chances for Jose Reyes and David Wright to compete for the Rookie of the Year disappeared when the Mets played service time manipulation games with them in 2003 and 2004, When Wright was promoted, Reyes, a natural shortstop, was re-learning how to run the bases (really) so he wouldn’t hurt his hamstrings and back. He was doing this while also learning how to play second base because the Mets impulse signed Kaz Matsui the previous winter.
Despite an impressive minor league pedigree, Matt Harvey didn’t debut until August 2012, at which point the countdown to an unhappy exit began for a headstrong player with an appreciation for New York City nightlife straight out of the ‘80s Mets playbook.
Jacob deGrom, a fringe top-10 prospect within the organization, was recalled from Triple-A Las Vegas in May 2014 along with the better-known Rafael Montero, who finished his Mets career 6-16 with a 5.38 ERA.
DeGrom, expected to provide depth out of the bullpen, immediately moved into the rotation when Dillon Gee got hurt and went on to win the Rookie of the Year in 2014 and consecutive Cy Youngs in 2018 and 2019. He was on the verge of surging past Gooden and Wright to become the second-most valuable player in team history, in terms of WAR, before exiting for the Texas Rangers as a free agent last December.
Pete Alonso won the Rookie of the Year after his 53-homer season in 2019 — one year after he was named the organization’s minor league player of the year but didn’t get a September cup of coffee because of concerns over his defense. Alonso debuted one year after the Mets tried turning Dominic Smith, a first-round pick in 2013 with a Jefferies-like skill set on both sides of the ball, into a left fielder, with predictable results.
Two homegrown Mets, Brandon Nimmo and Jeff McNeil, moved into the club’s all-time top 24 in WAR this season. Nimmo was a top-100 prospect in 2015, two years before he used up his rookie eligibility, while McNeil battled injuries as a minor league and was never listed among the top 100 prospects before debuting at 26 in 2018.
Steve Cohen’s purchase of the franchise in 2020 ensured the Mets would begin acting like a big-market team on the free agent market. But the Mets’ approach with Alvarez is an indication they are also figuring out a bolder and better way to handle their prospects.
With the idea Alvarez would spend at least the bulk of the first half of the season at Triple-A Syracuse working on his defense — and not just punching a clock until his arbitration eligibility was delayed until the winter following the 2026 season — the Mets signed former All-Star Omar Narvaez to pair with Tomas Nido. When Narvaez suffered a serious calf injury in the opening week of the season, the Mets immediately promoted Alvarez instead of journeyman Michael Perez.
And under manager Buck Showalter — who refused to tolerate Mel Hall bullying youngster Bernie Williams with the Yankees even when such actions were implicitly condoned if not outright encouraged by most of managers in the early ‘90s — the likes of Alvarez and fellow rookies Brett Baty and Mark Vientos have been welcomed by the veterans whose jobs they may take.
Eduardo Escobar, who lost most of his playing time at third base when Baty was promoted, often sits next to Baty in the dugout — and on the team plane. Baty was the first person out of the dugout to embrace Francisco Lindor when the latter delivered a walk-off hit against the Cleveland Guardians on May 19.
The most important words and actions were those spoken and delivered by Nido, who was the second-longest tenured Mets player before he was designated for assignment Monday upon Narvaez’s return from the injured list.
“I’m a huge fan of him, always been,” Nido said upon his own activation from the injured list on May 25. “I’ve always told him he belongs here.”
It took almost four decades, but the Mets are finally making Alvarez and the rest of his promising peers feel the same way.
