and here's all the pitches he's seen this year and some details about them:
You can see and you probably already knew that four of his seven hits are home runs, and not cheap home runs at that. Other than those home runs he has a well struck double to left and a couple hard hit singles that stayed on the ground. He is striking out an alarming 39.1% clip, but that has been coming down recently as he is starting to make contact more frequently as he settles in. He has a dismal .130 BABIP and has drawn just one walk in 46 plate appearances.
I'm not really sure to what to take from the pitch results above, but you can see that he has had an interesting year dealing with the change up. He swings 70% of the time at them which is probably more of a bad thing than anything, and he has a poor 27.0% whiff percentage on them. Surprisingly he has seen only 20 curveballs this year and has done a good job with them, only whiffing on two of them.
Pitchers don't throw Alvarez much junk. Every pitch listed has been thrown or a strike at least half the time, and most of them are well above that. Pitchers are attacking Alvarez how they know how and he hasn't been able to do too much to this point. The Colorado series gave us a lot of hope that he's getting there, but only time will tell if that was meaningful at all.
I'd expect Alvarez to be in the lineup the first three games against the Braves as they are throwing out three righties to face the Pirates before a lefty (Mike Minor) goes on Monday. There's a good chance Alvarez plays Monday too but it's not a sure thing. Keep an eye on him.