Houston Astros Slugger Ranks Among MLB Legends in Mind-Blowing Stats

Houston Astros fans (and baseball fans in general) know that Yordan Alvarez is a great player. He turns 27 later this month and his trophy case is already full of accolades.

In his first six seasons in MLB, Alvarez has already won the AL Rookie of the Year award, two All-Star selections, a Silver Slugger Award, an ALCS MVP Award and a World Series ring.

If he keeps this up and stays healthy, he’ll probably have a plaque hanging in Cooperstown one day, too.

Still, there’s a feeling around the game that fans don’t fully appreciate how special Alvarez truly is at the plate. Part of the reason is that injuries have often kept him off the field, limiting his numbers. He topped 30 homers three times, but never reached 40. He also has just one 100-RBI campaign to his name and has never scored 100 runs in a season.

To truly understand Alvarez’s greatness, one must look at his pricing stats.

Through 550 career games entering Friday’s game against the Detroit Tigers, he is a career .295/.387/.579 hitter, good for a .966 OPS and 164 OPS+. He also hit a home run every 14.0 at-bats – an elite ratio.

One stat that really stands out is Alvarez’s strikeout percentage.

His .579 mark is the fourth highest for a left-handed hitter in American League history, behind only a few well-known names in the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox.

The only three players ahead of Alvarez are Babe Ruth (.692), Ted Williams (.634) and Lou Gehrig (.632), all of whom are Hall of Famers and on the short list of greatest hitters of all time . .

Alvarez’s number is even more impressive given the context.

Ruth, Williams and Gehrig all got their start before MLB’s integration and retired before the AL’s first expansion in 1961. They also never had to deal with night games, to trips to the West Coast, powerful relievers and a number of changes that altered the sport. over the last century.

Looking at it another way, Alvarez has the best slugging percentage of any left-handed hitter in the AL who debuted after World War II.

It’s pretty darn impressive.

Like many of his Astros teammates, Alvarez’s numbers are down a bit this season.

His OPS is down 102 points from last year, but he’s still posting a solid .293/.367/.521 with 14 homers and 35 RBIs. More importantly, he’s healthy, having played in all but one of Houston’s 69 games so far.

Alvarez is off to a torrid start to June, slashing .395/.469/.907 with 11 extra-base hits and 13 RBIs in 11 games this month. After a slow April and May, he’s back to hitting like one of the greatest hitters of all time.