How the Mets could fit Francisco Alvarez on their roster this year

The New York Mets are fortunate to have one of the best prospects in baseball playing one of the more premium positions in the game in Francisco Alvarez. There aren't many great catchers in the major leagues and Alvarez profiles as a future superstar.

The 20-year-old is among the youngest players in the Eastern League of AA. For AA Binghamton this season, he's slashed .275/.348/.549 with 13 home runs and 33 RBI. Alvarez has a 142 WRC+ and has been one of the best hitters in the league and the Mets organization as a whole.

Despite his young age and relative inexperience, the Mets have not ruled out an Alvarez major league debut in 2022 according to Danny Abriano of SNY.

Bringing Francisco Alvarez up to the bigs would be extremely exciting but the Mets would have to make roster changes.

The Mets have their catching tandem set with James McCann and Tomas Nido in the fold. McCann signed a four-year $40 million-dollar deal prior to the 2021 season. It's safe to say that the contract has not worked out at all yet, but I don't think the Mets will cut him. Teams certainly won't trade for him.

Nido is a guy a team needing a backup catcher might trade for, but I don't see the Mets using McCann in a backup role yet and definitely would not want Alvarez in that role.

An option the Mets do have is rostering all three of them and using Alvarez as a DH. I don't think this is the best idea as the Mets have JD Davis in that role primarily now and he's swung the bat extremely well. They've also used the DH in order to play Luis Guillorme a lot in the field.

With Alvarez not even appearing in AAA yet I worry that the Mets are rushing him when there isn't really a need to. Even with McCann and Nido producing well below average results at the plate, they're both excellent defensive catchers. The Mets currently rank third in all of baseball scoring 5.1 runs per game, so they aren't exactly starving for offense.

If Alvarez were to get called up, I'd want him to serve as the primary catcher. McCann and Nido both are out of options so one of them would have to be traded or released as neither profile as a DH. I don't think using a 20 year old as a full-time DH is the best thing for the Mets for Alvarez and for the team itself.