Yordan Alvarez makes his spring training debut today in West Palm Beach against the Washington Nationals, and he will do it with plenty of support. 2025 regulars Jose Altuve, Carlos Correa, Christian Walker, Cam Smith and Jake Meyers join him in the lineup and Astros ace Hunter Brown will be the game’s starting pitcher.
When healthy, Yordan Alvarez is widely regarded as one of the most dangerous hitters in the majors. “When healthy” was a conditional clause that could not be met last year, as Yordan Alvarez was limited to just 199 plate appearances. The Astros missed the postseason for the first time since 2016, and by just a game. Less than, really, as they missed out on the last spot by tiebreaker rules.
That just reinforces how important Alvarez is to the Astros. A team doesn’t go anywhere with its best player sitting off to the side (unless it’s the 2021 Braves and Ronald Acuna.) Getting a full season of plate appearances from their far and away best hitter is and should be a top priority.
Ideally, that would involve a lot of DH’ing for Alvarez to preserve his knees. But an aging Jose Altuve entering his age 36 season needs to make use of the DH slot too. Isaac Paredes will also need it, both because he is recovering from his 2025 injury, and also because Carlos Correa is entrenched in his Paredes’ primary position of third base. Other inevitable injuries during the season will likely also require other players to need to make use of the DH slot.
To get a full season of Yordan’s bat is going to require him to play left field, and to play left field a fair amount. And also a fair amount of prayer.
But hope springs eternal. Or is it spring hopes eternal?
In any case, similar to the 2025 Astros, the 2026 Astros aren’t going anywhere without Yordan Alvarez. The fact is, they may not go anywhere even with Yordan. This Astros roster does not approach the powerhouse rosters of the peak of this window.
If the window is not shut, then it is Yordan keeping it cracked open. Whether it’s enough to keep the oxygen circulating, well, we’ll see.
Today’s game is not televised. However, many previous untelevised spring training games at West Palm Beach, were watchable it via a camera feed above home plate at the level of the press box, accompanied by the Astros’ radio broadcast.
It’s not clear yet if today’s game will have that video feed, or if this game will be available with radio broadcast only. If a video feed is available, the link can be difficult to find, as it does not become available until the time of the game itself. Sometimes you can find it at https://www.mlb.com/astros/video/ . Some of our readers use Grok to find the link. We will try to update this page with the link as it gets to game time, if one is available, so keep checking back.
Update: Here’s the livestream link for the game – https://www.mlb.com/astros/video/spring-training-hou-wsh-194611?t=t117-default-vtp
Probably the best way to keep updated is to join other The Launch Angle readers in the TLA Discord chat server, where we will be watching or listening to and discussing the game live.
Just use this link to join: https://discord.gg/DKXDJw9qF. For those of you who have participated in gamethreads at other site(s) in the past, you’ll probably recognize some familiar names and fellow Astros fans. (Just please say hello once you join, so we know you’re not a bot. )
