Mets coach is getting heat from fans for his advice to Francisco Alvarez

Hitting coaches are like politicians. When things are going well offensively for a team, they look like geniuses just as a president would under a prosperous economy. Whenever a team struggles to hit, the hitting coach gets the blame as will a president during a recession. The New York Mets hit a ton in 2022 and Eric Chavez received a lot of the credit. Elevated to the bench coach spot last year, the offensive struggles looked, in part, to the loss of him focusing his attention on that area.

Chavez reclaimed a hitting coach job alongside Jeremy Barnes in the offseason and not much has been discussed about his role with the club this season. The Mets have hit at times. They’ve been equally cold through other stretches.

Wrath from fans has avoided Chavez until now. In Tim Healey’s recent story on Newsday, a deep dive into the struggles of Francisco Alvarez and the advice given to him by Chavez has Mets fans talking.

Why Mets fans are annoyed with hitting coach Eric Chavez

Within the story, Chavez discusses his attempt to make Alvarez into a more complete hitter while maybe not taking the best approach.

“I told him: Listen, you hit 25 home runs last year. That’s great. I looked at your year and I don’t think it was very good. There’s a lot of areas you could get better at.”

Chavez isn’t wrong. Alvarez did have a great and powerful season but came up short in a lot of other spots. However, the issue fans have with Chavez’s comments have to do with his discouragement of Alvarez hitting for power. As Healey included in his story, Chavez is upset about the “outside noise” who have directed Alvarez to pull home runs instead of his more complete approach.

Here’s how a few fans reacted to the story:

Everyone goes through slumps and as the last comment above suggested, maybe these worries about hitting are hurting Alvarez on defense, too. After leading the league with 8 passed balls last season in his 873.2 innings behind the plate, he’s already at 7 this season through 529.1. Several of the passed balls have been costly.

Alvarez does, fortunately, rank as one of the best when it comes to catcher framing runs. At least in this area, he hasn’t let his powerless feeling consume him.

Only 6 home runs this season, Alvarez has scuffled at the plate to find hits of any kind. After a 2-hit performance against the Colorado Rockies on August 7, Alvarez has only 3 more hits. The walk-off against the Baltimore Orioles is by far the most important and accounted for only his second RBI in August. His other came on August 2.

Hitting coaches are often the first to blame and with many Mets hitters struggling this season, it’s easy to suggest Chavez is not having a very good year. Fans can usually get a good idea of what happens behind the scenes from the public praise. More players have given credit to J.D. Martinez than either hitting coach. Many of us come away with the same conclusion.