Yordan Alvarez is actually a terrible comp for Mariners' red-hot slugging prospect

There's no need to Google which MLB slugger Seattle Mariners prospect Lazaro Montes is often compared to. We don't mind telling you it's Yordan Alvarez, just as we don't mind telling you that the comparison is a little too flawed to be useful.

The Alvarez comp didn't come out of nowhere. Montes himself has been open about modeling his game after the Houston Astros' three-time All-Star. They're also both hulking left-handed hitters from Cuba, and they even trained with the same hitting instructor.

When he's swinging it well, Montes does tend to look like the next coming of Alvarez. And he happens to be swinging it very well for the Double-A Arkansas Travelers, as a slow start has given way to 1.086 OPS and nine home runs in 18 games since April 28.

But then there are the strikeouts.

Montes, who ranks as MLB Pipeline's No. 30 prospect, has a 27.4 strikeout percentage in the minors, whereas Alvarez posted a more modest 20.8 strikeout rate before he got to the majors. He's now an above-average contact hitter in MLB, while Montes has a worrisome 30.6 K% since he got bumped to Double-A last year.

There's also the other, less flattering way in which Montes is like Alvarez. Though he has a strong arm and he does make the occasional highlight-reel catch, Montes is definitely a bat-first player. On a long enough timeline, the 6-foot-5, 210-pounder is likely to become a bat-only player.

If Lazaro Montes is going to be a star in MLB, it'll be in the mold of Kyle Schwarber

It's hard to make it as any kind of bat-only player in MLB, much less one who strikes out a lot. That template can tease success, but mostly results in failure — think Franmil Reyes, Pedro Álvarez or old friend Rowdy Tellez.

A fun trivia question, however, is how many hitters have ever racked up 20-plus fWAR despite a career strikeout rate of at least 28 percent over at least 3,000 plate appearances. And here's the answer:

• Giancarlo Stanton: 28.7 K%, 44.7 fWAR
• Byron Buxton: 28.5 K%, 28.7 fWAR
• Trevor Story: 28.2 K%, 26.5 fWAR
• Adam Dunn: 28.6 K%, 25.6 fWAR
• Kyle Schwarber: 28.5 K%, 23.4 fWAR

Neither Stanton nor Buxton nor Story was/still is a one-note player with nothing to offer outside the batter's box. Dunn most definitely was, and Schwarber is the closest thing to a modern-day Dunn as there is in MLB today.

Schwarber gets the occasional start in left field, but he's mostly a DH. He also consistently fans close to 30 percent in any given year, and he has even gone above that threshold with a 32.9 K% this year. So prodigious is Schwarber's power, though, that he's following a career-high 56 home runs in 2025 by upping the ante and chasing Cal Raleigh's 60 homers in 2026.

Montes' power generally grades as a 70 on the 20-to-80 scouting scale, and you can see it in his extreme exit velocities (i.e., over 110 mph) in addition to his home run count. And that's not the only Schwarber-like skill he has to offer. Montes has walked in 15.1 percent of his minor league plate appearances, a figure worthy of Schwarber's career 14.2 walk rate in the majors.

Granted, Kyle Schwarber is not as good as Yordan Alvarez. You can tell from how the latter has more WAR for his career (26.0) despite having played in 616 fewer games. Not that Mariners fans need a reminder, but Alvarez is just that good of a hitter.

But if we're going to do the whole "MLB comps for prospects" thing, the least we can do is be responsible about it. And if you're technically going to downgrade a guy's comp, going from Yordan Alvarez to Kyle Schwarber is about the best outcome anyone can hope for.

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