Barely a week into the 2026 season, it’s simply too soon to make any realistic predictions about how the year will play out. At this point, projecting with confidence which teams will win their divisions or which players are in line to win their leagues’ major awards is generally inadvisable.
But early-season statistics can certainly mean SOMETHING. Whether it’s traditional stats or Statcast metrics, if you’ve given this season’s numbers at least a cursory look, one name at the very top of most leaderboards might not be surprising.
That would be Astros slugger Yordan Alvarez, who appears to be reminding us all what he’s capable of.
After seeing limited action in 2025 due to multiple injuries, Alvarez hasn’t missed a beat in the best start we've seen from ANY top hitter so far in 2026. Entering Friday’s series opener against the Athletics in West Sacramento, Alvarez owned a .417/.563/.917 slash line with three home runs -- numbers that would be even better if it weren’t for an Opening Day clash with the Daikin Park roof.
Obviously, Alvarez won’t continue to put up stats like that for a full season, but he has shown year in and year out he’s among MLB’s very best hitters. Could this be the MVP-caliber season Alvarez’s talent has hinted at ever since his debut? If so, it couldn’t be starting much better.
Statcast supremacy
It’s not just Alvarez’s surface numbers that have looked great: His underlying quality-of-contact metrics are arguably even better. Alvarez’s .412 expected batting average thus far is just a shade below his actual .417 average, and his .953 expected slugging percentage is actually an improvement on an already excellent .917 mark.
No one would reasonably expect Alvarez to finish with an expected wOBA anywhere near his current .596, considering that Aaron Judge’s .480 xwOBA in 2024 is the record under Statcast tracking (since 2015).
But so far, Alvarez has been the cream of the crop in ’26, sitting at or near the top of several major leaderboards entering Friday.
Alvarez’s Statcast ranks among qualifying hitters, 2026
xBA: .412 (3rd)
xSLG: .953 (2nd)
xwOBA: .596 (1st)
Avg. exit velocity: 97.2 mph (6th)
Alvarez ranks in the 79th percentile or better in 12 of Statcast’s 13 principal hitting categories, with only his 34.8% chase rate (in the 25th percentile) an exception -- and even that stat appears to be a blip. Alvarez has never run a chase rate over 30.6% in a full season before, and that number isn’t likely to soar during what appears to be a highly productive age-29 campaign.
How productive, exactly? Alvarez’s wRC+ through his first seven games was 304, i.e. more than three times higher than the MLB average. While that is sure to come down considerably, Alvarez is no stranger to wRC+ leaderboards since making his debut in 2019.
Highest wRC+, 2019-26
1. Aaron Judge: 184
2. Yordan Alvarez: 164
3. Juan Soto: 159
4-T. Shohei Ohtani: 156
4-T. Mike Trout: 156
Back at full strength
Alvarez’s talent, though, hasn’t been the issue. Compared to most of MLB’s other top hitters, the Astros star has had some trouble staying on the field.
After being named the 2019 American League Rookie of the Year, Alvarez played just two games in 2020, undergoing arthroscopic surgery on both knees that August. He landed on the injured list briefly due to right hand inflammation in 2022 and missed over a month of 2023 with right oblique discomfort.
But 2025 was a different beast: Alvarez went on the IL on May 5 with what was first diagnosed as right hand inflammation and later as a fracture. He shut down his rehab after suffering a setback and did not return until late August. On Sept. 15, he sprained his ankle stepping on home plate and missed the rest of the season.
Alvarez played just 48 games in all, and even when he was on the field, his stats weren’t great: He put up a .273/.367/.430 slash line with nine home runs. (That’s despite a fair amount of bad luck: Alvarez’s .338 wOBA in 2025 was much lower than his .393 expected mark.)
Now, the Astros are trying to keep their star -- who entered 2026 Spring Training pain free -- on the field as much as possible. Alvarez has played left field in only two of Houston’s first seven games, spending most of his time at designated hitter so as to limit potential injuries.
Everyone in Houston received a bit of a scare when Alvarez was plunked on the upper arm by Red Sox starter Garrett Crochet on Wednesday, leading to a visit from a team trainer, but the slugger turned out to be fine. For a player with Alvarez’s talent (and his track record of injuries) it was a major sigh of relief.
MVP caliber?
If Alvarez can stay healthy all year -- or even for most of it -- the sky truly is the limit.
With a career .298 average and .966 OPS, he hasn’t exactly had to be an iron man in the past in order to factor into awards voting. In his three most recent full seasons, Alvarez has garnered considerable attention despite never even reaching the 150-game threshold.
2022: 135 games played, AL All-Star, third in AL MVP voting, AL Silver Slugger (DH)
2023: 113 games played, AL All-Star, 13th in AL MVP voting
2024: 147 games played, AL All-Star, ninth in AL MVP voting
Even if Alvarez plays every game in ’26, beating out players like Aaron Judge, Cal Raleigh and Bobby Witt Jr. for a potential first MVP won’t be easy -- especially for a primary DH. Shohei Ohtani owns all four MVPs among DHs, but there were extenuating circumstances: He pitched in three of those seasons and went 50-50 in the other. Alvarez is great, but he’s not going to do either of those things. (We’d sure like to see it, though.)
In all likelihood, Alvarez isn’t going to bat over .400 or slug over .900 all year, either. But his past numbers offer a pretty solid floor for his production, if healthy: an average around .300, 30-35 home runs, strong plate discipline and an OPS in the low .900s.
His ceiling, on the other hand? It’s not quite THIS good. But it might not be too far off.