Francisco Alvarez Out 6-8 Weeks Due To Left Hamate Surgery

11:09PM: Alvarez suffered the injury while taking a swing during live batting practice yesterday, Mendoza told the New York Post’s Mike Puma and other reporters.  Mendoza expects Alvarez to miss the full eight weeks due to the added wear-and-tear that catching duties will place on his left hand.

9:52AM: Mets catcher Francisco Alvarez will undergo surgery to fix a fractured left hamate bone, manager Carlos Mendoza told reporters (including Newsday’s Tim Healey).  Alvarez will miss the next 6-8 weeks recovering from the procedure.

It’s an unwelcome development for both Alvarez and the Mets, and it marks the second straight season that Alvarez has suffered an early-season injury to his left hand.  Last April, Alvarez suffered a torn thumb ligament that required surgery, and he ended up missing a little over seven weeks’ time.  He returned in mid-June and hit .237/.311/.411 with 10 home runs in 283 plate appearances over the rest of the regular season, but Alvarez struggled to a .577 OPS over 47 PA in the playoffs.

Considered one of the game’s top prospects during his time in New York’s farm system, Alvarez has posted almost exactly league-average production with a 99 wRC+ over his 779 career PA at the Major League level.  These numbers are still quite respectable for a catcher that just turned 23 last November, plus Statcast has given his defense (particularly his framing) above-average grades, even though his blocking left a lot to be desired in 2024.

If Alvarez is going to make the jump from solid regular to star in 2025, it’ll now have to wait until at least the latter half of April.  Hamate fractures or breaks are common enough that the 6-8 week timeline is more or less set in stone for most players, though naturally complications can arise when dealing with any hand-related injury.  Such normal actions as gripping a bat could take a bit of re-familiarization, and Alvarez’s left hand will also be tested by regularly catching pitches.

With Alvarez sidelined, Luis Torrens now becomes the top catcher on the Mets’ depth chart.  Acquired in a trade with the Yankees last May, Torrens hit .229/.292/.373 in 130 PA with the Mets last season, which roughly matches his career slash line over 937 PA and parts of seven big league seasons.  Torrens did a great job of throwing out baserunners (would-be stealers were only 12-for-23 against him) last year but isn’t considered a great defensive catcher overall.

Torrens and Alvarez are the only catchers on New York’s 40-man roster, and Jakson Reetz’s eight career MLB games make him the only other backstop in the organization with any big league experience at all.  It seems exceedingly likely that the Mets will now look to acquire another experienced catcher or two to compete for playing time over the remainder of Spring Training.

These new faces could come in the form of players cut from other teams’ spring camps, or perhaps a club could be already be looking to trade a non-roster invitee catcher if the club knows this player won’t be part of their Opening Day plans.  Looking to the free agent market, former Mets catcher James McCann is unsigned and could be brought back as a familiar face.  Yasmani Grandal is also a known quantity to David Stearns, as Grandal played for the Brewers in 2019 when Stearns was Milwaukee’s president of baseball operations.

Alvarez’s hamate fracture is the latest in a series of injuries to have already hit the Mets this spring.  The rotation has been thinned out since Sean Manaea (oblique strain) and Frankie Montas (lat strain) will both start the season on the injured list, and backup infielder Nick Madrigal is expected to miss the entire season after undergoing shoulder surgery.  While Alvarez’s injury is comparatively less serious, the lack of catching depth makes his absence a trickier roster hole to address.