New York Mets top prospect Francisco Álvarez was unstoppable to start the season. Over his first such games, he hit .375/.429/1.000 with three doubles, four homers, and 10 RBI.
That was four homers over six games. Then, well, nothing.
Álvarez made 111 plate appearances without hitting another homer. It wasn’t just the homers. It was a real power outage with him only hitting six doubles seeing his slugging drop to .396.
At this point, it’s important to remember Álvarez is the youngest prospect in the Eastern League. Moreover, at some point, all prospects struggle at some point in their careers.
Sooner or later, the best prospects figure it out and start mashing again. On that point, in the third inning against the Reading Fightin Phil’s Álvarez was starting to figure things out.
That was his fifth home run of the season. Álvarez wouldn’t take nearly as long for him to hit his next homer. In fact, that would come in his very next plate appearance.
It was all part of a very big day for Álvarez at the plate. I’m his five plate appearance, he was 4-for-4 with three runs, a double, two homers, and two RBI.
Álvarez’s stats took a jump with this one. After seeing his slugging dip below .400, it’s now at .464. Yes, his game was that good.
This was just the third multi-home run game of his career. This marked the first time in Double-A.
For Álvarez, it’s the second time in his career he’s really struggled. Back in July 2021, he hit .189/.294/.419. He responded to that by hitting .299/,359/.586 over his final 35 games of the season.
Álvarez appears to have the ability to make adjustments and break out of these cold spells. As we saw against the Fightin’ Phil’s, he’s breaking out of one right now.
If Álvarez keeps hitting like this, the sky is the limit. If he keeps hitting like this, he may join the Mets in the majors at some point.
