{"id":6152,"date":"2025-06-22T20:14:08","date_gmt":"2025-06-22T20:14:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/6152\/"},"modified":"2025-06-22T20:14:08","modified_gmt":"2025-06-22T20:14:08","slug":"mets-option-francisco-alvarez-mlb-trade-rumors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/6152\/","title":{"rendered":"Mets Option Francisco Alvarez – MLB Trade Rumors"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Mets announced today that they\u2019ve optioned catcher Francisco Alvarez<\/a><\/strong> to Triple-A. Catcher Hayden Senger<\/a><\/strong> was called up to take Alvarez\u2019s spot on the active roster.<\/p>\n

Alvarez, 23, is in the midst of his fourth MLB season. He played just five games in the majors in 2022, however, and entered the 2023 campaign a consensus top-10 prospect in the entire sport. He hit a respectable .209\/.284\/.437 (97 wRC+) with 25 home runs in 123 games during that rookie campaign while grading out as one of the sport\u2019s best defensive catchers. It was a strong enough showing to make Alvarez a lock to serve as the Mets\u2019 regular catcher in 2024, but was sidelined by a hand injury that ultimately required him to undergo surgery on his thumb and miss nearly two months. Alvarez was able to hit a respectable .237\/.307\/.403 (102 wRC+) last year, roughly league average production despite a sharp decline in power output.<\/p>\n

While Alvarez\u2019s overall offensive line was on par with expectations in 2024, there were still reasons for concern. His once-elite defense was just average in 2024 as his blocking ability went from average to the second percentile among qualifying catchers per Statcast. His pitch framing numbers also slipped slightly, though they still remained elite. In addition to the step back defensively, Alvarez\u2019s power outage last year led underlying metrics to judge his performance at the plate more harshly last year; his xwOBA dropped from .305 in 2023 to just .289 in 2024 despite his wOBA remaining steady at .310 across both seasons.<\/p>\n

2025 started out on a familiarly tough note for Alvarez, as he missed the start of the season due to surgery on his left hand\u2014this time to repair a fractured hamate bone. Since making his season debut on April 25, Alvarez has hit just .236\/.319\/.333 with a wRC+ of 91. That\u2019s not terrible for the standards of the catcher position, but it\u2019s still a far cry from the roughly league average production he had posted for his career entering this year. He\u2019s also hitting for even less power than last year, with just three home runs and three doubles in 35 games. An 8.2% barrel rate suggests that might be due to some lackluster batted ball luck, but further steps backward defensively aren\u2019t as easy to dismiss.<\/p>\n

Alvarez has remained below average as a blocker behind the plate after last year\u2019s rough showing, and he\u2019s now become one of the worst framing catchers in the league after that was his strong suit in his career prior to this season. While he\u2019s stayed somewhat valuable by throwing out opposing base runners at an elite rate, Alvarez has fallen off to the point of becoming an average to below average catcher overall based on his numbers this year. Between his offense trending downward and his uncharacteristically lackluster defense behind the plate, the Mets clearly felt it was time to send him to the minors for a reset.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a sign of urgency for a club that recently lost seven consecutive games before snapping that losing streak with a win over the Phillies last night. The Mets are in a statistical tie with Philadelphia for the NL East title at the moment, which puts a premium on wins as they look to rebuild their lead in the division and put the club\u2019s front office in position to buy more aggressively at the trade deadline this summer. While the best version of the Mets involves Alvarez in the lineup on a regular basis, though Luis Torrens<\/a><\/strong> has shown himself to be deserving of a regular role in the short-term with strong defensive grades and an 89 wRC+ that\u2019s not too far off of Alvarez\u2019s own figure this year.<\/p>\n

In the short term, it seems Senger will be tasked with backing up Torrens. The 28-year-old made his MLB debut earlier this year and has hit .179\/.207\/.214 (18 wRC+) in 29 plate appearances across 13 games in the majors. Longer term, there\u2019s little question that Alvarez will return to the majors with the club and rejoin Torrens as part of the club\u2019s catching tandem. The Athletic\u2019s Will Sammon<\/a> reports that the Mets are satisfied with their catching tandem at this point and that they aren\u2019t expected to enter trade season in the market for catching help.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Mets announced today that they\u2019ve optioned catcher Francisco Alvarez to Triple-A. Catcher Hayden Senger was called up…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6153,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[7697,7698,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-6152","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-francisco-alvarez","9":"tag-hayden-senger","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114728853563904145","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6152\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}