Alvarez’s lesson not too painful
Yordan Alvarez refused to hide behind the excuses before him. The baseballs are dead, traveling less than last season or perhaps the year prior.
Whatever the reason, Alvarez hadn’t hit a walkoff home run in his three-year major league career.
He took one swing Thursday and presumed he had.
“We all thought it was gone,” manager Dusty Baker said, “but the ball isn’t gone until it disappears over the fence.
Hitters know when they’ve hammered a ball. Teammates and fans, too. Alvarez massacres mistakes like Gregory Soto made in the ninth inning. The Tigers’ fireballing closer hung a two-strike slider to Alvarez in a tied game.
Alvarez annihilated it to the left center field gap. It exited his bat at 106.4 mph and traveled 397 feet. The sparse Thursday crowd at Minute Maid Park came to a crescendo at the crack of Alvarez’s bat. He stopped to admire his handiwork, not realizing the ramifications of his decision.
“I think I froze a little bit after I hit the ball,” Alvarez said through an interpreter. “I thought the ball was gone. Obviously that doesn’t justify me not running.”
Alvarez did not begin running until the baseball bounced off the left field wall, when he had walked halfway up the first-base line. His missile amounted to a 397-foot single. At the absolute least, Alvarez should have been at second base.
In the slog of a 162-game season, Thursday’s game — and Alvarez’s decision — meant little. But he’ll carry the lesson he learned through his entire career.
Baker removed Alvarez for pinch runner Chas Mccormick — a sound baseball decision, not a disciplinary move. The precocious 24-year-old slugger found Baker in the dugout after he exited the game. According to Baker, Alvarez said he “messed up.”
“Then I came in here, again, went to him and apologized and then to all the guys,” Alvarez said from the team’s clubhouse after the 3-2 win. “Obviously we won the game, so that’s going to help me to sleep a little bit better at night tonight.”
Alvarez’s mistake could have been calamitous. Soto made the American League All-star team last season. His four-seam fastball averages 98 mph and touches 100. Soto had allowed one earned run and five hits all season. Stringing together three or four quality at-bats against him is an arduous task, even for Houston’s elite group of hitters.
Alvarez made it moreso. If he’d ended up at second base, Mccormick would have scored on one base hit. Instead, two more hitters had to cobble together terrific plate appearances to make it moot.
Yuli Gurriel worked a seven-pitch walk that moved Mccormick to second base. Kyle Tucker then guided a fastball on the outer half through the Tigers’ defensive shift. The ground ball trickled through the six-hole and allowed Mccormick to score the winning run — one made possible by Alvarez’s initial swing.
“Baseball is a game, like life, it teaches you lessons sometimes,” Baker said. “… He’d have really felt bad had we lost that ballgame. Fortunately for us, sometimes you need your teammates to bail you out. It’s a valuable lesson. He knew that he messed up. We’re not going to dwell on it, and we probably won’t see it again.”
Alvarez’s contrition after the game felt palpable. Houston did win the game, rendering his mistake a footnote in an otherwise impressive comeback. His was not the only mistake, just perhaps the one garnering most public attention.
Closer Ryan Pressly did not protect a two-run lead in the top of the ninth. One strike away from victory, he hung a curveball to Jeimer Candelario, who crushed it for a game-tying two-run homer.
“I had a very poorly executed pitch,” Pressly said. “Probably a handful of times that I can count that I’ve done something like that and it’s frustrating, especially being the first time out. Thank God for Tuck and Yordan and everyone who swung the bat really well today and bailed me out.”
A sentiment shared — and lesson learned — by another teammate still learning the nuances of major league life.
“I’m still a little bit upset I disrespected my teammates and the game a little bit there,” Alvarez said, “but obviously we won, so I’m super happy about that.”