Yordan Alvarez does not want to talk about it. Everyone else does.
The Astros’ designated hitter entered Thursday hitting .329 with 35 home runs and 85 RBIs — leading the American League in all three categories, and leading the entire major leagues in two of them. He is chasing something baseball hasn’t seen in fourteen years, and a version of it that hasn’t happened in seventy.
Two Different Records
It’s worth separating the two achievements, because Alvarez is in range of both.
The league Triple Crown — leading your own league in average, homers and RBIs — was last won by Miguel Cabrera in 2012, when he hit .330 with 44 home runs and 139 RBIs for Detroit.
The major league Triple Crown — leading all of baseball in all three — is far rarer. Mickey Mantle was the last to do it, in 1956. Since RBIs became an official statistic in 1920, only four players have managed it.
Alvarez currently leads the majors in both batting average and home runs, and is right in the mix for the overall RBI lead.
The Margins
Two of the three races look comfortable. The third does not.
- Batting average — his lead is close to insurmountable, roughly 29 points over his nearest AL challenger. Yandy Díaz has been the most persistent pursuer, and Miami’s Otto Lopez has spent stretches of the season atop the overall leaderboard.
- RBIs — a solid cushion of about seven, though this is the category most dependent on teammates and therefore the most volatile.
- Home runs — the danger zone. Junior Caminero sits at 33, two behind, and Yankees catcher Ben Rice is at 32. Two homers is nothing. A cold week and a hot week from someone else flips it.
Caminero is the real threat, and not just numerically. The Rays third baseman is having an MVP-caliber season of his own — a .932 OPS, 242 total bases (second in the AL), 52 extra-base hits (third), and he recently became the sixth-youngest player in history with back-to-back 30-homer seasons. He is not going to obligingly cool off.
Why This Season Stands Out
Here’s the part that makes Alvarez’s run genuinely remarkable: he’s doing it in an offensive environment that is anything but forgiving to leaderboard chases.
Entering Wednesday, 21 qualified hitters had an OPS of .850 or better — the most in a season since 2021, when 34 players cleared the bar. League-wide offense is up. More hitters are producing at an elite level than at any point in half a decade. Separating yourself from that field in three categories at once is substantially harder than it would have been in a pitcher-friendly year.
Alvarez’s full slash line, .329/.442/.640, explains how. He isn’t just hitting for average or power — he’s doing both while reaching base at a rate that would lead most seasons outright.
The Two Obstacles
Health. He currently has enough plate appearances to qualify for the batting title, but that requires maintaining the pace to the finish. Any extended absence ends the conversation immediately.
The team. Houston is leading a tight AL West, with Texas and Seattle both within striking distance. That’s a blessing for the RBI chase — meaningful games mean full lineups and no rest days — but it also means Alvarez will spend September being pitched around by clubs with nothing to lose.
The Man Himself
Alvarez has been consistent about refusing to engage. “I’m just focused right now on playing ball,” he told MLB.com last month, adding that with two months left he had no interest in answering further questions on the subject.
Which is the correct answer, and also completely futile. He’s the AL MVP frontrunner. He’s leading the sport in two of the three oldest statistics baseball keeps. And there are forty-seven games left to find out whether a 28-year-old from Las Tunas, Cuba joins a list containing Mantle, Cabrera and almost nobody else.
He can decline the questions. He won’t be able to decline the attention.
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