Jose Alvarado had himself a mini-breakout in 2018. In his first full season with the Rays, he threw 64.0 sparkling innings, with a 2.39 ERA, 2.27 FIP, and 3.15 xFIP, for 2.0 fWAR, tops among Rays relievers and eighth among all MLB relievers in 2018.
He also played first base, tortured hitters with a 30.4 percent strikeout rate, and even got some Jeff Sullivan love over at FanGraphs. It was a good year!
There’s a chance Alvarado could be even better though. Here is Alvarado’s overall pitch mix for his entire career, per Brooks Baseball:
Alvarado Career Pitch Mix
The burly lefty certainly prefers his two non-breaking pitches, but even with well over 10 percent usage of both his slider and his curve, we’re far from a Chris Archer situation, but is there something to unlock?