Francisco Alvarez: Champ or Chump for Fantasy Baseball?

Is Francisco Alvarez a fantasy baseball sleeper, bust, or neither? Is he a flash in the pan or will he thrive? Rick Lucks's deep dive into Alvarez's 2023 fantasy value.

When mega-hyped prospects fail to make the Opening Day roster, fantasy managers have grown accustomed to waiting for service time shenanigans before seeing what they can do at the big league level. That appeared to be the case when the Mets left Francisco Alvarez off of the Opening Day roster, but that has changed.

Omar Narvaez has been diagnosed with a left calf strain, sidelining him for several weeks and giving Alvarez, the organization's consensus #1 prospect and #3 in all of baseball per MLB Pipeline, a shot. With a 35% roster rate in Yahoo! formats, fantasy managers looking for help at C may be preparing to burn through a substantial amount of FAAB.

Unfortunately, there are three major reasons why Alvarez may not prove to be a worthwhile investment in redraft leagues this season. Let's take a look:

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Francisco Alvarez Has Substantial Swing-and-Miss in His Game

If you quickly look at Alvarez's MiLB resume, you would see some solid-looking numbers. He hit .277/.368/.553 with 18 HR in 296 PAs for Double-A (Binghamton) with strong plate discipline metrics: 12.2 BB% against 24 K%. The performance earned Alvarez a promotion to Triple-A (Syracuse) where he hit .234/.382/.443 with nine long balls in 199 PAs. His BB% and K% both increased to 17.1 and 26.1, respectively.

Those numbers look big league ready, but remember that the entire MiLB environment has become more hitter-friendly over the last few seasons. More importantly, Alvarez's surface stats mask an issue with swing-and-miss that may make it difficult for him to adapt to MLB pitching.

Alvarez had a 16.1 SwStr% at Double-A last season, a number far higher than his raw 24 K% would suggest. Things were a little better at Triple-A with a 14.5 SwStr%, but the number is still elevated when you consider that SwStr% nearly always jumps at the MLB level.

It involves tiny sample sizes, but Alvarez has had significant swing-and-miss issues in the Show. His career MLB SwStr% is 20.3%, and his 19 Triple-A PAs this season involved a 42.1 K% and 18.7 SwStr%. We can't draw concrete conclusions from such tiny samples, but it is enough to say that his swing-and-miss wasn't rectified over the offseason.

Alvarez may struggle with strikeouts more than most due to his relative passivity at the plate. For example, Javy Baez consistently posts miserable SwStr% rates but strikes out less than you'd expect because he swings so often. Alvarez has a good eye that sometimes leads to called strikes he cannot afford with so many swings and misses. Big league hurlers are likely to take advantage.

This shortcoming is reflected in Alvarez's FanGraphs scouting report, which gives him a 40-grade hit tool both now and in the future and 50-grade game power despite 70-grade raw power. They have Alvarez ranked 13th overall, which is an impressive placement that's nevertheless lower on him than other sources.

Many Fantasy Platforms Don't Think Francisco Alvarez is a Catcher

Fantasy managers are accustomed to getting virtually nothing from their C slots, so you might be willing to take on some batting average risk for the 25+ HR upside Alvarez offers. Unfortunately, most fantasy platforms say you cannot do that yet.

Alvarez struggled in a brief MLB sample last season, hitting .167/.286/.500 with a homer in 14 PAs. The Mets were desperate for offense at the time, deploying Alvarez as their DH rather than asking him to learn the pitching staff on the fly. That gave Alvarez a mere two games and four PAs as a C, which wasn't enough to qualify in most fantasy formats.

Alvarez was consistently a catcher on the farm, but the major fantasy sites prioritize big-league performance when they can. Thus, Alvarez is limited to utility slots in many fantasy leagues right now, with catcher eligibility yet to be determined.

Naturally, fantasy managers have higher expectations of util slots than C slots. At the time of writing, ZiPS was the only major public projection system to assign Alvarez at least 200 PAs. He's projected to hit .221/.319/.410 with 19 HR in 450 PAs, numbers that are borderline for catchers and absolutely unacceptable for util-only.

Francisco Alvarez May Not Play As Much As Expected

Mets manager Buck Showalter was asked about how he would strike the right balance between letting Alvarez develop and using him to win baseball games, and his answer wasn't great for Alvarez's fantasy managers. Showalter noted that it would be "very heavily weighted toward winning games," adding that "the time he spends as a backup is very valuable too."

There has been widespread speculation that the Mets would DH Alvarez on the days he doesn't catch, but the team may be reluctant to do that with Tomas Nido being the only other catcher on the roster. Nido is also considered a strong defensive catcher whereas Alvarez is considered below-average defensively due to limited athleticism and an ankle injury from last season.

Teams are reluctant to use poor defensive catchers on a regular basis, especially with the explosion in SB attempts we've seen so far this year. Young catchers are also asked to focus on their defense before offense, meaning that Alvarez may not get the offensive development he would as an outfielder or first baseman.

When Alvarez finally cracked the Mets lineup for the first time on April 9, he hit eighth in the batting order. The Mets have a relatively deep lineup, but that placement suggests that Alvarez will find it difficult to earn a role that would offer fantasy value this season. As such, counting stats may prove elusive.

Welcome to the squad, Francisco Álvarez! pic.twitter.com/G049MBbnHq

— New York Mets (@Mets) April 9, 2023

The Verdict on Francisco Alvarez

Fantasy managers in keeper leagues would do well to acquire Alvarez now as catchers aren't known for the offensive upside he offers. However, managers in redraft leagues should be much more cautious. Alvarez is likely to strikeout a lot in his first extended exposure to MLB pitching and may not play as often as expected.

Alvarez's batted ball profile was all over the place as a minor leaguer, and he may not have the loft to produce the power numbers expected of him right away. As such, the 21-year-old looks like a Chump for 2023.

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