There is no doubt Francisco Álvarez has struggled this season. Entering the series finale against the San Francisco Giants, Álvarez was 2-for-23 at the plate with no extra base hits, no walks, and seven strikeouts. Those are just ugly numbers.

Part of the reason is Buck Showalter and whoever else in the New York Mets organization froze him out. Despite spring training promises Álvarez was going to catch regularly whenever he was called up, Álvarez took a clear back seat to Tomás Nido.

To some degree, you could understand the rationale. Nido is the far superior defensive catcher. He is a superior defensive catcher as compared to nearly anyone. The idea was his work behind the plate offsets his offensive struggles, and that was all the more important with all of the Mets pitching injuries.

With Nido, he better be great behind the plate to carry that career 57 wRC+. Historically, he has been that. The problem is he has not been remotely good at framing to the start of the season posting 45.8% strike rate and 0 catcher runs (Baseball Savant).

This carries the usual small sample size concerns and caveats. However, when you make a short term decision like playing Nido over the long term decision of playing and developing Álvarez, you have to have all of the stats completely in your favor to justify the decision.

The Mets don’t have that at the moment. In fact, from a framing perspective, the still very raw Álvarez has been outplaying Nido.

Like Nido, Álvarez has posted 0 catcher runs, but he has done it with a 50.0% strike rate. His pop times and exchange rates are slower than Nido, and we have seen teams have a willingness to run on Álvarez a little more. That said, at least in terms of purely catching the pitch, Álvarez seems to be the better performer.

He also has much more potential in his bat. We saw it when he took Tyler Rogers deep in the series finale against the Giants. Keep in mind, Rogers is a reliever with a 0.5 HR/9 rate You have to really earn it against Rogers, and that goes double in that ballpark.

Francisco Álvarez became the first right-handed hitter (and only second since start of 2022 season) to take Tyler Rogers deep since Manny Machado on 8/9/2022.

pic.twitter.com/79z1v5Zb9Z

— Mike Mayer (@mikemayer22) April 24, 2023

In that moment, we saw the reason why Álvarez has been compared to Mike Piazza. His power is immense, and his offensive potential is off the charts. He just hasn’t gotten it going in the majors in his brief career.

Again, part of the blame lies on Showalter (or whoever is directing him not play Álvarez). It is a decision hurting the team in the short term, and it can hurt the Mets in the long term. They need to let him learn how to be a better catcher, and they need to let him get into a groove at the plate.

Álvarez is the Mets catcher of the future. If they paid any attention, and if they cared about player development, he could be the catcher of the present. After that homer and looking at all of the numbers, it is beyond time to make the switch.