“Saves” is not a catcher’s stat, but maybe it should be.
With two outs in the seventh inning of the Mets’ win over the Phillies on Tuesday, the pitch clock was running down.
Kodai Senga had a 1-2 count on the Phillies’ Kyle Schwarber and was not able to sync up quickly enough with catcher Francisco Alvarez.
If Senga had stepped off the mound — with nobody on base — the pitch clock would not have reset.
The only way for Senga to get a breather and have more time to deliver a pitch without being charged with a ball was for Alvarez to intervene.
So the rookie catcher, playing in his 34th game of the season, got out of his crouch and charged to the mound, picking a mound visit over an automatic ball.
The two briefly talked, even if they couldn’t quite understand each other, and Alvarez returned to his spot behind the plate.
A pitch later, Schwarber struck out on a ghost forkball, and Senga walked off the mound after seven strong, scoreless innings.
Give Alvarez a save in an at-bat that he did not let get away from Senga.
“It’s something we weren’t sure how it was going to be, but his aptitude is outstanding,” catching coach Glenn Sherlock said of Alvarez before the Mets played the Phillies on Wednesday at Citi Field. “His preparation is great. … He studies. He’s ready.
“The way he interacts with the umpires. The way he sees the clock ticking down, and you can see him with his hand motions, like, ‘Let’s go, throw the pitch because we’re going to have a violation.’ He’s a heads-up kid.”
Add overall defensive acumen to the list of compliments paid the catcher who has played as if he is much older than his 21 years of age.
Alvarez statistically was the best catcher in baseball during May, entering Wednesday with seven home runs and a 1.029 OPS in the month.
Injuries to Tomas Nido (who has returned and started Wednesday) and Omar Narvaez (on a rehab assignment) cleared the way for the future, who has looked like the present.
The swings and power are Alvarez’s most obvious gifts, but the Mets have been happy with his defensive development.
“The pitching staff knows how prepared he is for the game, and I think they have a lot of confidence in him,” Sherlock said of Alvarez, who has been an advanced-stats darling, too.
Alvarez entered play as the sixth-rated catcher in baseball in terms of turning borderline pitches into strikes.
There are techniques catchers use to best frame pitches for umpires — reaching forward on balls sinking out of the strike zone, reaching back on balls toward the top of the zone — but Alvarez’s separator is a pair of “extremely quick hands,” Sherlock said.
“He’s explosive, but he’s very athletic,” Sherlock said of a player listed as 5-foot-10 and 233 pounds. “And his flexibility is good.”
And Sherlock called his work ethic “great.” On Wednesday, Alvarez was on the field 4 ¹/₂ hours before the game to work on catching pop-ups while Sherlock fed balls into a machine.
Away from the field, they go through video of previous games, and Alvarez will ask about certain situations and, for example, when a mound visit is required.
He listens to input and applies it, as he did with Senga.
Each day, Alvarez learns more.
“He makes quick adjustments,” Sherlock said of a player who is better known for the offensive adjustments he has made.
It is not just that Alvarez is excelling a few months after he became legally allowed to drink alcohol in this country.
It is that Alvarez has emerged at perhaps the most difficult position to master.
“You got to watch the clock. You got to hit [PitchCom] buttons. You’ve got to think the game through,” said manager Buck Showalter, who called Alvarez’s aptitude “impressive.”
“The things that catchers are responsible for in today’s game — it’s become a thinking man’s position even more than it was in the past.”