TORONTO -- When Francisco Alvarez tore his right meniscus back in May, Mets officials bemoaned the fact that, yet again, Alvarez would not enjoy a long, uninterrupted runway to try to make good on his prospect potential.
Yet Alvarez returned to the Mets in about half the time those team officials initially estimated, and since his comeback, he’s starting to make strong use of that exact kind of runway. Alvarez hit his fourth homer in nine games Tuesday to lead the Mets to a 3-0 win over the Blue Jays, offering the latest bit of evidence that he can, perhaps once and for all, become an unquestioned middle-of-the-order hitter for these Mets.
“We love Alvy,” interim manager Andy Green said. “We’re dying to see him in the lineup consistently. … Alvy has the type of bat that you want to keep out there as often as you can.”
Leading off the fifth inning, Alvarez -- serving as the designated hitter, with Luis Torrens catching -- crushed a Kevin Gausman fastball to straightaway center field to break a scoreless tie. Impressive to Green was the fact that, despite Gausman’s ability to bury splitters with two strikes, Alvarez managed to stay on the fastball well enough to hit it a Statcast-projected 415 feet.
Two innings later, Torrens added a solo shot of his own off Mason Fluharty (which, fittingly, the Mets’ bullpen catcher caught), making it an awfully productive night for Mets backstops.
“It’s always good to be able to help out the team in any way that we can,” Torrens said through an interpreter. “On a day like today, where Alvy is DH, I’m catching, or if the manager ever decides to do vice versa, I think it’s good to be able to have that unity there and be able to have success as a group.”
Alvarez finished 1-for-4, striking out twice but advancing A.J. Ewing with a groundout en route to an insurance run in the ninth. That performance lifted his June OPS to .821. Despite missing the first week of the month due to injury, Alvarez finished June with five home runs, a total he has not surpassed in any calendar month since hitting eight in July 2023.
That season, Alvarez broke out with a 25-homer performance as a 21-year-old. Injuries and inconsistencies have held him back ever since. Over the past three seasons, Alvarez has never played more than 100 games in a year nor hit more than 11 homers.
This year, he has a real chance to do both, potentially re-establishing himself as one of the better offensive catchers in the league.
“I’ve been feeling really good,” Alvarez said. “But I also think I’ve got to keep working and keep getting better.”
As Alvarez noted, one solid month does not mean his issues have been solved. His chase and strikeout rates remain notably high, and despite the freak nature of many of his past ailments, Alvarez has not shed his injury-prone reputation. He’s been on the IL four times in the past three seasons.
Yet Alvarez is still just 24 years old, still a force when he squares up baseballs, still as talented as when he was one of the top prospects in the sport. That all counts for something.
“It’s a damage bat,” Green said. “Getting Alvy’s bat going, he can do some things that we don’t really have any other right-handed bats that can do. So it’s huge to see him do that.”