How to attack Yordan Alvarez in the ALCS

How do you stop Jordan Alvarez? Way too often for jugs, don’t do that. Bring a defending Cy Young winner to relief? home run. Throw him 98 outside the zone? home run. Are you waving him to first base on purpose? Take care of Alex Bregman now.

Alvarez hit a homer in his first major league game, and he basically never stopped. Only Aaron Judge has beaten him this year, and that undercuts to an extent; Go back to the integration in 1947, look at everyone who had at least 1,500 record appearances by the age of 25 and realize that the list of top hitters goes like this: Frank Thomas, Mickey Mantle, Mike Trout, Albert Pujols and Jordan Alvarez. (Note that Alvarez’s .872 Postseason OPS is not included.)

It’s not hard to argue that he’s, or comes close to, being the best hitter in baseball today. And yet: teams do bring him out. His career base percentage of .384 is excellent, but it also means he fails more than 60% of the time. Even the Mariners managed to pick him out seven times in the 18-inning game 3 when they wouldn’t otherwise allow him to bat .733 against them. It’s not that it’s not possible. It’s done.

Take last year’s World Series, for example, when the Braves held him to a .100/.208/.200 line in 26 plate appearances. Or back in 2019 when the Yankees lost the ALCS but held Alvarez to just .045/.125/.045 in 24 plate appearances.

It’s not easy, but it can be done. As? Allow us to introduce you to some dos and don’ts.

DON’T: Worry too much about the draw advantage.

Alvarez is left-handed. Attack him with left punches. Right? That was Seattle’s plan with Robbie Ray anyway, and it didn’t work. But as Mariners manager Scott Servais explained, the goal wasn’t really getting a left pitcher on the mound. It was getting the right kind of pitch on the hill.

“Alvarez is very good left-to-left,” said Servais after game 1. “We know that when we go in. You have to weigh the odds and where it is right there and I look again at the numbers that are in front of me, I trust them. And what contributes to that is not just the pitcher’s handedness, but what that hitter is hitting, what that pitcher is firing out there. Now you have to get the ball [inside]you have to execute, you have to get the ball in the right places.”

But Servais’ argument that pitcher’s handedness is less of a factor is an important one. Just look at Alvarez’s platoon splits, or lack thereof.

Vs. LHP: 0.998 OPS, 19% C
Vs. RHP: 1,030 OPS, 19% C

Vs. LHP: 0.963 OPS, 22% C
Vs. RHP: 0.980 OPS, 23% C

Not a big difference, right?

As of 2019, he has the 11th-best OPS against lefties, but all 10 names ahead of him are righties or switch-hitters. But why stop there? Go back to 1947. The best left-handed racquet is, unsurprisingly, Barry Bonds. Third is Stan Musial ahead of Ted Williams. The second best is Jordan Alvarez.

We’re obviously talking about only 557 plate appearances in parts of four seasons, and that can make noise. But as Servais noted, there’s not much to suggest that having the left pitcher out there is worth much to you. Maybe that’s a relief to Houston’s ALCS opponent who lacks left relief anyway.

DO: Throw high with righties and low with lefties.

Provided, of course, that you have the right mugs for it.

Of course, just because Alvarez has a little platoon difference doesn’t mean there’s absolutely no difference between the pitcher handedness you use. Against lefties, Alvarez is worse low than high. It’s not quite as strong against righties, but it’s also pretty clear that its hot zones are low.

There is no one size fits all, and different pitchers have different strengths. But as a general starting point:

Another way to think about it is that if he doesn’t make contact, he can’t do any harm, and the crossed-out version of these charts tells a similar story. Most strikeouts (red) are not equal against both hands, and the fewest strikeouts (blue) are where the pitcher might want to avoid.

He probably won’t miss in the middle or against lefties, but you have a low shot. Against right-handers there are no puffs to be found deep and inside. It might be something high or outside.

In Game 1 of the ALCS, Seattle’s Andrés Muñoz (a right-hander) tried to go deep inside in the eighth inning. Alvarez would then come around on a Bregman home run, cutting Seattle’s four-run lead in half and setting the stage for the wild walk-off finish.

DON’T: Don’t worry if you throw him the same shot twice in a row.

One thought that came to us as we watched Alvarez hammer the pitching in Seattle was that maybe throwing him the same pitch twice in a row, letting him see it and timing it was a bad idea. After all, Luis Castillo threw him a first-pitch sinker before allowing a home run on another board; Ray did exactly the same. Then, in Game 3, Seattle attacked him with all sorts of approaches and he missed a hit. Is it that simple – don’t let him stop you with two similar pitches in a row?

Not exactly. First of all, we just showed you what Muñoz did with three consecutive four-sails, but to end this one we dug and found the numbers. On plate appearances that ended on at least two consecutive pitches of the same pitch type, Alvarez had a .431 wOBA, fourth best among those with at least 100 such plate appearances. (Aaron Judge, Freddie Freeman, and Juan Soto were better.)

But on plate appearances that didn’t end on consecutive pitches of the same type, Alvarez had a .415 wOBA, which is A) not that different and B) still second best, this time behind Paul Goldschmidt. Shuffling may or may not be part of your pitcher’s game plan. But it doesn’t seem to affect Alvarez particularly.

Like I said, the Braves knocked him out in the World Series last year. The Yankees did the same in the 2019 ALCS. In those two series, he hit .071/.220/.119 with a 36% strikeout rate.

Maybe it was just that even the biggest players can have a few bad games. Maybe it was because he was up against the best teams and the best pitchers. But maybe we can also learn something.

Check out the pictures below. Check out the fastballs on the top row. Right-handers went high, left-handers went low – consistent with our impressions above.

Look at the braking and offspeed values ​​in the bottom row. Right-handers went deep regardless of the side of the plate. The left stayed away almost uniformly.

Here’s how Tyler Lyons got him to strike in the ninth inning of Game 4 of the 2019 ALCS. Here’s how Will Smith ended last year’s Game 4:

Or maybe look at a single pitcher that was successful against him. Toronto’s Ross Stripling has come out unscathed on six plate chances, and if you look at where he served Alvarez you can see it’s almost entirely out with nothing near that emerging right pitcher danger zone.

It’s not, we should note, a foolproof plan, nor should every pitcher have exactly the same plan, because Alvarez is just so good when he’s right. But it helps to have an approach and try to work within it.

DO: Identify the correct pitcher and pitch type combinations.

Going back to what Servais said about worrying more about the pitch and the spot than handedness, check out Alvarez’s 2022 heatmap against lefties. There really was a zone to aim for if Ray managed to place it better.

Alvarez has actually never had a low-and-inside hit against a left-hander. je. (That’s in large part, it must be said, because it’s a point lefties rarely throw at him.)

You can see that low left sinker might work if you can get it right, and that’s how teams plan today. It’s not just about left/right. It’s about swing paths and pitch shapes.

What else looks promising? Aside from the upright fastball, here are a few ideas.

Curveballs, by right-handers. Alvarez has hit exactly one home run from a right-handed curveball in his career and hit 41 times with a .311 OBP. keep it out.

Left-handed cutters. Alvarez doesn’t see these too often, but he also only hit .257 against them. Try it.

DO: Accept that good throwing isn’t always better than good hitting.

This is now the second time Alvarez has been mentioned in the same sentence as Bonds, judging from our links-on-links leaderboard above. When you’re one of the best sluggers in the world, as he clearly is, sometimes all the game planning in the world won’t save you.

Look no further than the home run he hit against Castillo in Game 2 of the ALDS. It was 98 km/h. It was off the plate. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that pitch, aside from where Alvarez dumped it.

As he told The Athletic’s Eno Sarris earlier this year, he’s also studying the data and trying to see how the pitches can get him out so he can make the right adjustments. There’s nothing here he and the Astros don’t already know. This also applies to the jugs. It will make for an amazing game of cat and mouse.