Mets' Francisco Alvarez, the catcher without fear, is ready for his star turn

PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. — The most electrifying moment of Francisco Alvarez’s budding baseball life came when he was a rookie, the Mets’ season was not yet lost and the games still mattered.

It was July 5, 2023. The Mets were down to their final out on a tight, fast night in Phoenix. When his tying, two-strike home run snuck over the rightfield wall, Alvarez flamboyantly floated around the bases, tossing his bat straight up and leaping three times by the time he got to first, then turning his back to second so he could scream, mid-trot, to his dugout.

For Alvarez, it was all natural — the swing and the reaction. Minutes later, a thrilling win now complete, Alvarez shared his version of why he excelled in that moment and planned to excel in future such moments, which he called “my favorite part of the game.”

“When the game is on the line, what is the worst that can happen? That you’re going to fail?” Alvarez, cameras rolling and microphones on, said through an interpreter that night. “I’m not afraid of failure. When those moments come up, I’m comfortable.”

He is not afraid of failure. That sentiment — plus the personality and power that produced it — is one of the reasons the Mets still believe.

Entering the third year of his tenure as the starting catcher, Alvarez has been just OK (or worse, in his view). And yet, he is just 23 years old — a full 14 months younger than the organization’s highest-ranked minor-leaguer, pitcher Brandon Sproat, for example. All of the talent and potential that created the hype that made him perhaps the top prospect in the sport, remains.

“He is the real thing,” Mets catching instructor Glenn Sherlock said. “His work ethic is off the charts, and he really wants to be the best.”

Francisco Alvarez, the Mets’ catcher without fear, might be their next star. He feels ready for what figures to be a critical year in his development and ascent, even if that has to wait another month or so as he recovers from surgery after breaking the hamate bone in his left hand.

“I think I can be the best catcher in baseball,” said Alvarez, who since that game against the Diamondbacks has graduated to doing interviews in English. “I really think I have the potential to be the best catcher in baseball.”

Venezuela: ‘A place of nothing’

Even for a wunderkind, Alvarez’s fearlessness as a major-league novice was striking. But he had good reason. The origins of that mindset stem from growing up in Venezuela and an impromptu, throwaway exchange with a countryman in the lower minors.

Alvarez’s attitude and numbers were down in the summer of 2021 when he played for the Brooklyn Cyclones, the Mets’ High-A affiliate. It was his first full season of professional baseball. He was 19, living in New York City, tired and discouraged. One day when he stepped up to bat and there was a pause in play, he saw behind the plate Israel Pineda, then a Washington Nationals farmhand.

Pineda recognized Alvarez from the tryout circuit back home, when they were teenagers looking to go pro. He asked the innocuous question of his old acquaintance: How is it going?

Alvarez was honest. He was struggling.

Over a year older and not nearly as heralded, Pineda offered perspective.

“Everything that we get now, everything is like a cherry on top. It’s a gift from God,” Pineda told Alvarez, the latter recalled. “There’s nothing to lose because we’ve already come from a place of nothing. Anything that we get extra is just a gift.”

That resonated with Alvarez. It helped mentally, which helped physically, he said. He used to show up to the ballpark every day demanding to himself that he get a hit. But afterward? Hit or no hit, move on to tomorrow.

“Maybe he doesn’t remember what he told me,” Alvarez said, “but I always remembered it.”

Pineda remembers.

“Keep doing your thing and we’ll see each other in the big leagues,” Pineda, who appeared in four games with Washington in 2022, said. “He’s always had that childlike personality, enjoying the game and having a lot of fun. Obviously, through the years, he’s always been like a little man-child physically . . . I look back and looking at what he’s done at this level and where he’s at — things worked out the way I always thought they would.”

The mutual upbringing the catchers discussed is commonplace in Venezuela. For Alvarez and his family, middle-class status didn’t come with the same security that the label carries in the United States.

They always had food to eat and a place to sleep, but violent crime was “almost seen as something normal,” Alvarez said. His mother, Yolanda, was an accountant. His father, Jose, was a construction worker. When he finished their home, the surrounding roads were dirt.

“I wouldn’t call it necessarily a good neighborhood,” Alvarez said, “but he built the house that we ended up growing up in.”

And so a little failure in a kid’s game doesn’t so much seem like adversity.

“I come here to the park,” Alvarez said, “and there’s really nothing to lose.”

Good to fine, fine to good

Competing at the game’s highest level — at an age when many of his elite American peers are in college or just entering professional baseball — Alvarez held his own in 2023-24, rating as about a league-average hitter. He wanted and wants so much more, though.

“I really think those two years are very bad,” Alvarez said. “Very bad for me. I’m not that guy. I’ve got to be better. I need to do better. I know I can do better.”

That is a harsh self-critique. In reality, he had fine-to-good seasons.

Alvarez hit 25 home runs as a 21-year-old rookie, just one fewer than Hall of Famer Johnny Bench for most by a catcher that young. But he batted .209 — too low, even in an era when batting average isn’t the be all, end all offensive statistic. His OPS was .721.

Last year — his season interrupted by a torn ligament in his left thumb that required surgery — Alvarez dipped down to 11 homers, a steep drop-off even when accounting for fewer games played. He batted .239, which was better but not good, and had a .710 OPS.

“.237, .209 is not my batting average. It’s not good for me,” Alvarez said. “It’s not good for any hitter. Even if you hit a lot of homers, .230 is not a good batting average.”

As he toiled, he watched one of his best friends in baseball, Mark Vientos, emerge as a legitimate top-of-the-lineup threat in his first real chance to play regularly. To Alvarez, that was encouraging. They had similar numbers in the minor leagues, so if Vientos can do it, so can he, Alvarez thought to himself.

But it wasn’t happening, for reasons he couldn’t quite deduce. During a brutal summer slump, Alvarez lamented that “I don’t feel powerful.” Fixing that became his winter obsession.

Welcome to Atlanta

Alvarez’s pursuit of greatness sent him to a city he really does not like. Aside from a Christmas return to Venezuela, he spent the offseason in Atlanta.

“The traffic sucks,” Alvarez said, laughing. “Worse than New York. Every day, every time, it’s traffic. Every day. It’s crazy. Sometimes I went out at 6 a.m., it’s already traffic everywhere.”

Nonetheless, he wanted to be there. Looking to rework his swing and stance, Alvarez sought the help of Tyler Krieger, a former Clemson standout and Cleveland minor-leaguer who now works as a private hitting coach. When J.D. Martinez introduced Alvarez to Krieger when the latter attended a Mets' game last year, Alvarez asked immediately if they could work together.

Already in the area, Alvarez needed somewhere to work on his strength and body, too. In nearby Canton, Georgia, he found Exos Sports Performance Training and Jordan Bush.

“He is one of the hardest workers I’ve ever been around, no matter the sport,” Bush said. “He’s a dawg.”

Bush is a performance specialist with a degree in kinesiology and exercise science. A former Division 1 strength and conditioning coach, Bush mostly has worked with football players, including those in the NFL and those training for the NFL Combine.

Alvarez, Bush said, was “one of the strongest — pound-for-pound powerful — guys I’ve ever been around.”

“We’re going to train you to be a better athlete. And that’s going to make you a better baseball player,” Bush said. “He’s always asking for more. I’m not saying we don’t do enough, but 'what can I do at home for mobility? What can I do at home for stretching, recovery, meals?' ”

Their goal was to build Alvarez in a way that helped him “avoid injuries that can be avoided,” Bush said. When Alvarez’s hamate bone fractured on a random March swing, there wasn’t much anybody could do about that. That just happens to hitters sometimes. But soft-tissue stuff can be improved upon.

Routinely during those months, Alvarez would reference his 2025 goal: 40 home runs.

Only five catchers have reached that total in a season, including just one — the Royals’ Salvador Perez in 2021 — this century.

“Always,” Alvarez said. “Every day when we were working, I told JB and [Krieger], I got to hit 40 homers. I got to hit 40 homers.”

Alvarez, the Mets’ catcher without fear, wants to be the best.

“He’s a super confident person,” Bush said. “But he’s never come off cocky. ‘I know the work I’m putting in and I know I’m great at what I do.’ ”

Alvarez said: “There’s a lot more in there. I can feel it.”

By Tim Healey

timothy.healey@newsday.com@timbhealey

Tim Healey is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. Born on Long Island and raised in Connecticut, Tim has previously worked for the South Florida Sun Sentinel, the Boston Globe and MLB.com. He is also the author of “Hometown Hardball,” a book about minor league baseball in the northeast.