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The 2026 season has not gone the way the Houston Astros envisioned. After Sunday’s loss to the Athletics, the Astros are 30-37 and in fourth place in the AL West. The only reason they’re even within shouting distance of first place is because the entire division has been mediocre so far. However, that doesn’t mean that everything’s gone wrong for them. One thing that has gone decidedly right for Houston is Yordan Alvarez’s comeback season. A fractured hand cost the three-time All-Star nearly four months of the 2025 season and, combined with a sprained ankle in September, limited him to a total of 48 games, his fewest since a torn patellar tendon wiped out all but two games of his 2020 campaign. But now he’s back with a vengeance, hitting .316/.431/.650 in 65 games for 3.3 WAR. He also leads the American League in home runs, RBI, and is second in batting average, behind only Yandy Díaz, at .325. We’re well into the third month of the season, which means the Triple Crown discussion is more than just silly speculation. Not that I’m above that, of course.

It’s true that two of the three Triple Crown stats have lost a significant amount of their analytical heft in recent decades, but it’s still a rare achievement for a player to finish the season leading his league in batting average, home runs, and RBI. More than that, though, Triple Crowns are cool. In the nearly 60 years since Red Sox legend Carl Yastrzemski won the AL Triple Crown in 1967, only Miguel Cabrera has managed to pull it off, in 2012 with the Tigers. No NL player has secured a Triple Crown since Joe Medwick in 1937.

For better or worse, Alvarez has tended to be overshadowed by Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani when the masses talk about baseball’s most feared sluggers. It’s hard for a huge power hitter on a successful franchise to be underrated, but I’d argue that Alvarez is actually one of those few examples. His 165 wRC+ ranks 11th in baseball history and fourth in the expansion era among players with a minimum of 3,000 plate appearances, and while that is bound to come down during his eventual decline phase, he’s set himself up nicely to be one of baseball’s all-time-great sluggers. He offers little defensive value, but he’s an incredibly well-rounded offensive player; he’s not a swing-and-miss hacker like many huge power hitters, and his production doesn’t diminish against left-handed pitchers. In fact, as Matt Martell explained in a Members-only mailbag column in January, Alvarez is the best left-on-left hitter since Barry Bonds. And even when we lower the minimum to 1,000 plate appearances, Alvarez is fifth in batting average among active players.

Triple Crowns are rad, and for any slugger building a Cooperstown résumé, there’s a real appeal in pulling off a feat that only four players have done in the last 75 years. Judge, Ohtani, Mike Trout, and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. have all made a run at a Triple Crown in recent years, but none of them has managed to pull it off. Alvarez’s 22 homers lead the AL, and two of the other players in the top five, Judge and Munetaka Murakami, are out with injuries. Judge in particular will be out long enough that he won’t threaten Alvarez for the home run crown, though admittedly it would be more fun for Alvarez to beat a healthy Judge. Alvarez’s RBI lead — two over teammate Christian Walker — is a small one, but he’s also the best offensive player on a high-run-scoring team, which gives him a good shot to hang onto the RBI crown. Batting average appears to be the toughest, but the AL isn’t overflowing with high-average hitters. Entering this week, only five qualified AL players are batting above .300. Besides, Díaz’s nine-point lead over Alvarez is hardly insurmountable.

Naturally, to get a better idea than just spitballing, I updated the ZiPS Triple Crown tool, and ran the rest of the season through the projections to see what kind of chances Alvarez may have. We’ll start with the easiest two legs for him, home runs and RBI.

These probabilities are quite close, and it’s not surprising given the strong relationship between isolated power — a lot of which comes from homers — and batting in runs. As I said above, Judge’s injury boosts Alvarez’s odds, as the Yankees slugger would be the slight favorite to win the AL homer crown if not for his injury. A healthy Murakami would actually be projected to edge Alvarez, too. According to ZiPS, Alvarez’s average homer projection is higher than Murakami’s, but the White Sox first baseman, when healthy, wins the AL home run crown in more projections than Alvarez does. That’s because ZiPS is less sure about Murakami in both directions, so his projected homer upside and downside is slightly greater than Alvarez’s. Even now, with Murakami expected to be out for another month, ZiPS thinks there’s a possibility that he could still lead the league in home runs.

A year ago, I wrote about Judge’s Triple Crown run. Third time was not the charm, and though Judge led the AL in batting average by 20 points, Cal Raleigh grabbed the home run and RBI titles. It’s worth noting that Alvarez has a higher probability of leading in homers and RBI than Judge did at roughly the same point last year.

Batting average is the hardest of the three categories for Alvarez, though he still has a one-in-three shot at winning the AL batting title. The field is pretty wide open, but he’s fortunate that seven of the 10 major league leaders in end-of-season average, per ZiPS, play in the National League, with Luis Arraez being the most difficult to beat. One of the biggest X factors is Jacob Wilson, who landed on the IL about a month ago with a dislocated shoulder but is reportedly close to returning. ZiPS currently expects Wilson to miss out on the batting title because he’s projected to fall short of the 3.1 plate appearances per game needed to qualify for the crown. But if Wilson comes back strong and proves to be durable over the rest of the season, his odds to lead the league in average might approach the full 20% that ZiPS would give him if it knew he’d reach the plate appearances minimum.

All told, when Alvarez leads the league in batting average in the simulations, he also leads in homers and RBI 88% of the time, giving him about a 27% chance of ending up with a Triple Crown. Alvarez isn’t merely having a terrific comeback campaign, he’s got a real chance to do something that has almost vanished from the sport. It would be premature to plan a parade based on a one-in-four chance in June, but his odds are strong enough that we also shouldn’t dismiss them. For a hitter who has spent much of his career just outside the Judge/Trout/Ohtani spotlight, winning one would be a loud corrective action. Alvarez’s ultimate Cooperstown case may not require a Triple Crown to put him over the edge — again, he’s currently 11th all-time in wRC+ — but it would sure be fun to see on the plaque.