A 5-Year Retrospective: Vlad Guerrero Jr vs Yordan Alvarez
Not even I could have predicted how one-sided the results would be
In May of 2019, I put a silly article together highlighting how Yordan Alvarez compared to Vlad Jr.
At the time, Vlad Jr was hyped as one of the greatest prospects of all-time.
With the article having some snippets like:
“Because there’s no question that Guerrero is the best prospect in baseball, let’s ask some bigger questions. Is he the best prospect in history? And if not, is he the best offensive prospect ever?”
The article goes on to say he’s not the best prospect of time, but potentially the best hitter, with some arguments for A-Rod, Griffey, and Trout in the article disputing the greatest prospect of all time.
While Yordan raked, he was still relatively unknown, having been traded for Josh Fields in what may compete with the Bagwell trade for the greatest of all time.
At the time of the article, Yordan didn’t crack Fangraph’s top 100 prospects, and while I highlighted that Yordan was setting all-time minor league records, even my article ended with:
“So with everything said, I can’t honestly say that Yordan is better than Vlad Jr. Or even close. What I can say, is what he’s currently doing, Vlad Jr had never matched in his career, which is an absolute blast to watch.”
I fully admit to being more of an analytics than a prospect baseball fan, but 5 years later, Yordan has not only matched Vlad Jr’s numbers, he’s absolutely dominated them.
Vlad Jr – .288/.363/.500, 160 HR, 17 WAR
Yordan – .298/.390/.583, 164 HR, 23.3 WAR
Yordan has stepped up to the plate 872 times less than Vlad, still hitting more home runs, and providing far more WAR in less games.
