Henderson Alvarez Still Not Walking Anybody; Blue Jays Keep Rolling In Spring

Published: 15^th Mar 12 2:38 pm

Thom Tsang
thomastsang

RANT It!

Andrew Weber-US PRESSWIRE

21-year old Henderson Alvarez paved his way to the majors with his ability to pound the strike zone with his power sinker, and now that his spot in the 2012 Blue Jays rotation is essentially guaranteed…well, nothing’s changed, really. He’s still content to not walk anyone, as evidenced by his strong 3-inning performance in yesterday’s 7-5 win over the New York Yankees.

Maybe it wouldn’t be fair to say that nothing has changed about Alvarez’s approach. Alvarez allowed a run on 4 hits against a Yankees lineup consisting mostly of regulars; on top of not walking anyone in his 3 innings of work, the young righty also added 3 strikeouts to his stat line, giving him 6Ks in 6 innings of work so far this spring, with a sparkling 3-to-1 K/BB ratio thus far.

It’s an incredibly small sample size, of course, but there has been a fair bit of talk about Alvarez having worked on his slider extensively over the winter. It was the pitch that lagged most behind his fastball (which he threw 71.8% of the time) and change (16.3); I wasn’t able to keep count of how many times he threw the slider in his outing and in which situations, but if it’s a pitch that he can add to what’s otherwise mostly a pitch-to-contact arsensal with increased movement from what we’ve seen last year, all those rumblings of a potential breakout at just age 21 might not sound all that farfetched. At the very least, it’s something to keep an eye out for during Alvarez’s next outing.

Speaking of eye-opening things, the Blue Jays’ newest experiment in left field, Edwin Encarnacion, turned in a hell of a day at the plate, hitting a pair of homers and driving in 3, which going 3-for-3. To add injury to insult, EE also knocked Yankees starter Freddy Garcia out of the game – literally – with a comebacker that bounced off the righty’s hand. As long as he can keep doing that with the bat, I assume the Blue Jays fans will be happy with him playing just about anywhere.

Still, it’s not quite the performance Brett Lawrie is putting on. The bluebirds 2nd year 3B-man has been straight up tearing the cover off the ball, hitting both a double and a triple last night, while adding his 4th stolen base in 8 games. Lawrie hasn’t left the park once yet – but when you’re hitting a ridiculous .591 with a 1.563 OPS, I’m going to guess that no one is too worried. This kid should be fun to watch this season.