Earlier this week, Mets manager Buck Showalter told the media that top prospect Francisco Alvarez is “getting more stripes on his arm, and at some point, he will get an opportunity,” and that he told Alvarez to come to camp as if he was preparing to win a job.
If that does happen, though, it will be because the Mets see Alvarez behind the plate, and not as a role player or possible DH-only option.
“We want to wait for the complete package to be there. If Francisco is on our club, if he makes our team or he shows up, we want to be make sure we can to catch him,” GM Billy Eppler said Saturday. “The long term trajectory for this young man is to be able to catch, so we have to be able to satisfy that up here. It would not be a pure DH situation.”
There were calls late last season for the Mets to call up Alvarez, who ended up hitting .260 with 27 home runs in 495 plate appearances between Double-A and Triple-A last year, to help solve their DH issues – even after the Mets acquired both Darin Ruf and Daniel Vogelbach.
Both of those players are once again in camp with the Mets, and with Omar Narvaez and Tomas Nido behind the plate, it might take an injury to one of the backstops for Alvarez’s chance to come now.
However, Eppler did put a caveat on his statement, just to cover all of his bases:
“You always put an asterisk on it: if circumstances present themselves that for some reason, something happened to Francisco where he couldn’t catch, and would not be able to catch the rest of the season...” he said, trailing off before saying as much as that may be enough to get Alvarez some MLB DH times. “But that’s just speaking in hypotheticals, and I’m putting that qualifier out there so you won’t take me to this moment if it happens!”
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