There's a Deep Dive Into Left Field
Breaking down Yordan's 53 games in left field
Back in October I went through the reasoning for Yordan to see less time in the field and more at DH in 2024.
This surfaced again as I began looking at 2025 projections for Alvarez. Early returns from my model project Alvarez to play around 50 games in left and 85 or so at DH.
As I pointed out in October, Yordan hits for a better average when playing the field, but the power is nearly identical.
As an aside, one thing that surprised me was the breakdown of Alvarez’s RBI between batting 2nd in the order and batting 3rd.
These are the Rabbit Holes I fall into when writing about baseball.
I had assumed his relatively low total of 86 RBI was due to batting second 236 times (generally, fewer runners on base than when batting third), but Alvarez averaged an RBI every 6.9 at-bats batting second and an RBI every 7.7 at-bats batting third, so what do I know.
I also broke down Yordan’s time in left field and found a few surprises there, too.
First, the well-worn mantra is Yordan plays the field when ground ball pitchers like Framber Valdez are on the mound.
True enough, Alvarez was out there for 14 of Framber Valdez’s 28 starts.
But he was also in the field for 14 of Spencer Arrighetti’s 28 starts and Arrighetti is no ground ball pitcher.
One lefty, one righty. One 60.6% ground ball pitcher and one 36% ground ball pitcher.
Alvarez also started in the field with guys like Jake Bloss, Blair Henley, Shawn Dubin and Taylor Scott on the mound, too.
It’s also evident the Astros didn’t want Yordan in left when Hunter Brown was giving up lasers early in the season. Alvarez was in left in games 3 and 14 of the season with Brown on the mound and then didn’t start in left with Brown pitching until game 55.
Brown has the second-highest (48.9%) ground ball rate of Astros starting pitchers, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see Yordan get more left field starts when Brown starts in 2025, assuming Brown picks up where he left off.
There appears to be more to the decision to play Yordan in the field other than “ground ball pitcher” and it’s almost assuredly a combination of factors that play into the decision, perhaps some as simple as “How you feelin’ today” or something similar.
It’s also clear that in 2024, Alvarez played in left one game per series, with a few exceptions (there were also a few series he didn’t play in the field at all).
As a reminder, Alvarez was -7 Outs Above Average in those 53 games, with an arm value in the 1st percentile (that’s not good) and arm strength in the 34th percentile.
I’m not a huge believer in the advanced defensive stats, but it’s what we have, which is better than nothing (at least most of them).
I don’t think Yordan is a horrible left fielder, but others currently on the 40-man (Chas and Dubon, for example) and plenty who are available, are better fielders and reduce the risk of injury to Alvarez.
Thank you for reading!