Wednesday catch-all thread (5/7/25)

Please use this thread all week to discuss any Mets-specific topic you wish.

The vast majority of players do better when they pull the ball and Francisco Alvarez is no different. Lifetime he has a 1.306 OPS when he pulls the ball, a .797 OPS when he hits the ball up the middle and a .686 OPS when he hits the ball the other way. So, why is it exciting to see Alvarez willingly go to the opposite field here in 2025?

What the OPS numbers don’t show are the strikeouts and weak contact made by Alvarez when he tries to pull the ball on pitches on the outer third of the plate. It’s next to impossible to quantify those at-bats but if you’ve watched him employ that pulled-HR swing on every pitch, you know it exists.

By all means, if the pitcher throws one middle-in, we all want Alvarez to pull the ball. It’s just that when they attack him outside, it’s nice to see him go with the pitch. Alvarez has the strength to hit home runs to right field and his only homer to date went to RF.

On his 24 balls hit, Alvarez has hit an equal number in all three directions. Ideally, he would pull more balls. Yet it’s tough to argue with the results so far, as he has a 135 wRC+. In his rookie year when he had 25 homers, Alvarez had a 97 wRC+. He also pulled 44.3% of the time and went to the opposite field only 20.1% when he made contact that season.

With Brandon Nimmo and Mark Vientos off to slow starts/not being consistent, it would be nice if Alvarez could help deepen the lineup with another productive bat after the first three hitters. Wouldn’t it be wild if he developed into the cleanup hitter that many projected him to be - not by selling out to hit home runs but by using the entire field?