https://sports.yahoo.com/astros-slugger-yordan-alvarez-wins-al-rookie-of-the-year-231903690.html Go Yordan! He's going to tear it up next year.
I hope he learns how to hit the lefty slider but put his AAA stats and major league stats and that's like 60 HRs and 150 RBI with around a 1150 OPS. Outrageous. Now do it in the playoffs, slugger.
He was bad in the ALCS, but bounced back nicely in the WS with an OPS of 1112. Hope it carries over to next season.
In a year with three sons of former Major Leaguers debuting (all on the Blue Jays) and two of them being sons of HoFers, this no-name Cuban who played half the season broke a perfectly pre-scripted narrative and unanimously took the Rookie of the Year prize. And he's not even close to his full potential. I hope he has people around him going forward that can help him keep getting even better.
I think this World Series Loss is a great learning lesson, in being humble, discipline at the plate. Alex Bregman especially needs to grow up in a sense, Yordan needs to evolve more as a 4th hitter. Yordan can mash 50 home runs next year. Carlos Correa health, and strike zone discipline is a must in the offseason. Forrest Whitley and Lance McCullers Jr. need to step up next year. Kyle Tucker needs to take over RF over Josh Reddick.
Until the game earlier against the Pelicans, I hadn't been able to get into the Rockets (had only watched two games) or really even read about sports since the Astros heartbreaking WS loss, so I've spent maybe a couple hours at most reading these boards over the last ten days. That said, obviously I haven't given much thought to the Astros off-season/next season...but man I have to admit when I saw the e-mail from the Astros come across this evening saying he had won it unanimously (not that we didn't expect this) I started to get that itch again and I think I'm finally over it and excited/ready for next season already. This kid has a chance to be the best hitter out of all of them (e.g. Bregs, Altuve, Correa and Springer) and maybe even in Astros history if you want to go that far. Joe Buck had Soto's junk in his mouth the entire series so the world properly got to understand/see how good Yordan is but the kid hit .412/.524/.588 in the WS in 21 PA and more impressively he struck out only twice to four walks. So while I understand Soto is a year younger and obviously given Soto's defense/speed he's the better overall player out of the two, he's not a better hitter and I would bet anyone that holds true over whatever time period they choose. The kid just turned 22 himself and had way less game experience than Soto coming into the series, and that's mostly just due to us being loaded and his fielding. Since literally his first game when he hit that 400+ foot opposite field bomb on a 1-0 change-up, pitchers gave this kid the respect in the box that only a few players in the game today get - quite frankly, I can't remember any rookie getting more respect than he did, especially one that was only 21. The Yankees were an awful match-up for him (on a related note maybe we should finally invest in a LHR after Soto tore us a new one?) and it seriously felt they game planned more for him than anyone in our lineup. They threw several different lefties at him with differing styles and it just seemed like their guys made some insanely good pitches on him too. If you take out the Yankees series, he had an incredible post season for his first taste. He was better than any of our other stars were in their first playoffs outside of maybe Correa and that's debatable. In summary...I'm really excited to watch this kid next year.
I think for Yordan the only complaint you should have about his WS is the fact he couldn't play in two of the games because of his defense...his 4/2 K to BB and .412/.524/.588 slash line doesn't say to me that "he needs to evolve more as a 4th hitter".
Yeah...I'm surprised to see anyone criticize his playoff performance. If you expected him to be THAT much better than he was you probably expected too much. People should go check out Soto's NLCS.
Thanks for letting me know - clearly I had no idea he struggled, I must have been getting a hot dog during the two ALCS games I went to at MMP. Maybe next time actually read the posts leading up to the one you commented on?