Almost universally, if a player on my favorite team wins an in-season accolade, like Player of the Week or Player of the Month, I take tremendous pleasure in the win. I know watching greatness, and I love recognition. They’re twoof my favorite things! However, I say “almost” above for a reason, and we got a taste of that yesterday.
Yordan Alvarez was named the American League Player of the Month for the month of April (with the last week of March tacked on, as well). That sentence in a vacuum should delight every Astro fan out there. Alvarez has been healthy and productive, a far cry from 2025, when he was neither. Take a look at the numbers and where Alvarez ranked for March-April:
In MLB, Alvarez was first in OPS (1.199), first in slugging (.737), first in on base percentage (.462), first in hits (42) and total bases (87), and tied for first in home runs (12). In the American League, he ranked first in batting average (.356), runs batted in (27), and extra base hits (21). In short, this was a great an offensive month as any Astro in their team’s history.
So why am I putting an emotional caveat on this accolade for Alvarez? I’m doing that because the team for whom he plays STINKS. As of Monday, which is when this award was announced, the Astros were 14-21, winning exactly 40 percent of their games. That’s a 64-win pace. That’s brutal, and that’s how bad this team is. They have the clearcut best offensive weapon in the sport, and they’re among the bottom five teams in said sport. Individually, Alvarez is one of the best stories in baseball, but drawing his checks from an unmitigated dumpster fire flat put ruins it.
The bigger question here is “What happens if Alvarez keeps maintaining an MVP pace, while playing for a team on pace for barely 60 wins?” Add in the fact that there is virtually no help on the way from the barren wasteland that is the Astros’ farm system, and you can see where I’m going with this — will the Astros reach a breaking point where they need to fetch a haul of young prospects in exchange for Alvarez?
It’s absolutely an option that GM Dana Brown and owner Jim Crane should be workshopping. Between the sheer production and his extremely reasonable contract (signed through 2028 at $26.8 million per year), Alvarez could fetch a record haul. His bat is one that can win a title for a team. Hell, there may not be a reasonable number of prospects to justify a trade, that’s how pristine an asset Alvarez is.
Ultimately, Crane has gone out of his way to say that as long as he is the owner of the team, the title window will always remain open. Unfortunately, we are all finding out that sometimes the window closing is out of ownership’s control. That’s what this feels like. The title window is slamming shut, behind the door of a near 6.00 ERA for a woeful pitching staff.
Prior to Monday, Yordan Alvarez had one the AL Player of the Month Award twice in his career, back in June 2022 and September 2023. The reality is that it might be best for the Astros to win his fourth one in another uniform.
