PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. -- The hardest part, Francisco Alvarez said, were the arepas -- large discs of corn dough stuffed with meat, eggs and cheese, which his mother would cook at their South Florida home. This offseason, Alvarez limited himself to only a few in his quest to round into better shape. When asked about missing them, he laughed and playfully dropped a four-letter word.
Rather than arepas, Alvarez’s mother cooked sweet potatoes, chicken and roasted broccoli seasoned with pepper. By the end of the offseason, the catcher had lost approximately 10 pounds. From a regular playing weight of 245 pounds last summer, the 5-foot-10 Alvarez intends to stay between 225-235 this year.
“It’s not a big change,” Alvarez said, “but it’s not nothing.”
While Alvarez did not begin his offseason intending to drop a set amount of weight, he hoped to become healthier overall. Now 24 years old, Alvarez has been the Mets’ so-called catcher of the future for the better part of a decade. Over the years, he’s shown flashes, including a rookie season that saw him slug 25 homers at age 21, and a second half of 2025 that included a .921 OPS over 41 games.
But there have also been notable low points, including a disappointing 2024 season and a spate of injuries, including three hand or wrist surgeries over a 19-month span. While those were largely unavoidable, they affected Alvarez nonetheless. Last June, the Mets demoted him to Triple-A Syracuse during a difficult and emotional time for him. He returned less than a month later to commence his season-ending tear.
In that fashion, at age 24, Alvarez has been to baseball hell and back again. He has climbed the mountain, fallen off it and begun climbing again. He has, as Mets catching coach J.P. Arencibia put it, “gotten kicked in the teeth by a game that’s really tough.”
A few beats later, Arencibia went on to say he expects Alvarez to have “a monster year.”
“He literally is so unbelievably good,” Arencibia said. “If he can just be the best version of himself, that’s when he becomes an uber, uber, uber star.”
In the eyes of Alvarez’s coaches, that means continuing to simplify things at the plate. Two years ago during Spring Training, Alvarez made a concerted effort to push more balls to the opposite field, which resulted in a higher batting average but far less power. At Syracuse last summer, Alvarez endeavored to rediscover what he does well. That meant being OK with chasing balls out of the zone from time to time, being tolerant of whiffs and strikeouts with the goal of putting more balls over fences.
Defensively, Alvarez worked to get his “base” back under him, as Arencibia put it, stabilizing his body to quiet his motions both as a thrower and a receiver. The coach compared it to driving a Rolls-Royce with a flat tire. Once Alvarez corrected the issue, the tire reinflated.
These are, of course, the sorts of optimistic comments that float freely throughout Florida and Arizona this time of year, when anyone can look at someone like Alvarez -- still just 24, somehow younger than rookie teammate Nolan McLean -- and view all of his potential without so much as a glance at the warts. None of it means anything unless he can produce tangible results during the season.
That’s what makes Alvarez’s weight loss so notable -- an early sign that tangible results are still well within his reach.
“When I look at that, I look at commitment,” Arencibia said. “More than anything, that’s what I look at -- somebody who is committed to being the best version of himself. And that’s what fires me up.”
Consider it another example of Alvarez’s makeup and work ethic, for which Mets officials have long praised the catcher. On Friday morning, Alvarez joked about his revamped diet, quipping that if he hits 30 home runs this year, he’ll ask his mother to celebrate by cooking arepas for “breakfast, lunch and dinner.”
“Every year, we come in with the same expectations: ‘It’s going to be our year, it’s going to be my year,’” he said. “For me, it’s just being consistent with my routine, being consistent with me, being consistent with everything. And go play baseball.”