Yordan Alvarez's Triple Crown Chase Is Still Very Much Alive

Alvarez is currently holding on to the Triple Crown by a thread. After a cold streak with home runs, Alvarez finally started launching them again, but it gave a few players in the league an opportunity to catch up.

Alvarez got things going for the Astros early in Sunday's game against the Diamondbacks, doing what he does best: crushing home runs, his 38th on the season, a career high for the slugger. With his little home run slump, every one counts, and he really needed that home run on Sunday. He's leading the AL in batting average and tied for the RBI lead, but as of Sunday, he's tied, not leading, in home runs after Tampa Bay's Junior Caminero also sits at 38.

The batting average race isn't much of a race at all in the AL. Alvarez has a comfortable lead over the next closest guy, Tampa Bay's Chandler Simpson, and unless he has a total slump, that category's pretty much locked up.

The RBI race is much closer. Alvarez is tied with Pete Alonso; that being said, a player doesn't actually need to hold the outright lead to win the Triple Crown, tying for the lead in all three categories at season's end is enough to claim the crown. That's a detail that matters a lot for Alvarez given how bunched up these leaderboards are right now.

If Alvarez pulls this off, it would be the first AL Triple Crown since Miguel Cabrera won it with the Detroit Tigers back in 2012, when he hit .330 with 44 home runs and 139 RBIsm per MLB.

Winning the AL Triple Crown would already be a huge accomplishment on its own. An overall Triple Crown across all of MLB is a different story, one that hasn't happened since Mickey Mantle did it in 1956, batting .353 with 52 home runs and 130 RBIs. That version is out of reach for Alvarez right now. He's four home runs behind Kyle Schwarber and two behind Pete Crow-Armstrong for the MLB lead, and 12 RBIs behind Sal Stewart, so he's not particularly close on that front. The AL crown is still the one worth watching, per MLB.

With roughly three weeks left in the season, every one of these categories could shift on any given night. But when Yordan Alvarez is locked in, there's no telling what he's capable of.