Houston Astros slugger Yordan Alvarez is coming off a 35-home-run season in which he also hit .308 with a 172 OPS+. Headed into 2025, the 27-year-old still feels the best is yet to come.
“The numbers are there right now still, but it’s still something I think about throughout the season,” Alvarez told
Brian McTaggart of MLB.com. “There’s injuries, there’s cold spells, there’s inconsistencies that might happen. Knowing myself as a ballplayer, and people that know me as a ballplayer, still know I have more in me.”
That was enough for Astros manager Joe Espada to take notice.
“When the big boy says that, you get excited,” he said, adding he still thinks Alvarez can “drive the ball more.”
Alvarez has consistently been one of the best players in baseball since taking home the AL Rookie of the Year award in 2019. He’s hit 30-or-more home runs each of the last four seasons and has been named to the All-Star team the last three years.
Astros hitting coach Alex Cintrón thinks Yordan Alvarez can be a ’40-, 50-homer guy’
Alvarez hit 37 homers in 2022, a career high. For now. His hitting coach, Alex Cintrón, has even higher expectations.
“I just feel like he’s a 40-, 50-homer guy,” Cintrón said. “I think with him talking about it, he’s a guy who has to be every year an MVP candidate because of how talented he is. He has a great approach, he’s smart, he’s powerful. When he’s hot, he’s one of the best hitters in the game. He can carry a team by himself.”
Cintrón also cited a few mechanics that Alvarez is working on that should improve his swing. Namely, he’s making sure his hips and backside is “on time as he loads his swing.”
McTaggart cited Alvarez’s quality of contact numbers as evidence that Cintrón could be right. His .595 expected slugging percentage far exceeded the actual .567 number he posted in 2024.
Alvarez also needs to stay on the field. The Astros will use him primarily as a DH to try and preserve his health as the outfielder has struggled with knee injuries throughout his career.
“We need this guy in the lineup,” Espada said. “If you ask him, he’s going to say all the right things — ‘Joe, I’ll go out there if you need me’ — but I need him to stay healthy, so the 50-plus starts I gave him last year [in left], I’m really going to try hard to stay away from him. For him to go out there, things are going to have to be awful for us to be running him out there that many games.”
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