ARLINGTON, Texas — Baseball’s best hitter is sometimes miscast, be it because his home runs are mammoth or his prodigious power is propelling the Houston Astros back into relevance. No player in this franchise’s 65-season history has required fewer games to hit 20 home runs, but those who first scouted Yordan Alvarez saw something more than the masher many presume he is.“You can get guys that have bat speed, you can get guys that have big raw power,” Charlie Gonzalez once said. “And they’re speeding the game up and going 100 mph in the box. They don’t have that thing that holds it all together. And the good ones do.”Gonzalez, now the Astros’ senior scouting adviser, discovered Alvarez more than a decade ago. He wrote him up for Oz Ocampo, Houston’s former international scouting director who has long described Alvarez as a “hit over power guy.” Alvarez’s plate discipline doesn’t get enough attention. Nor does his pitch recognition. The swing-and-miss that plagues other sluggers doesn’t affect Alvarez, who whiffs just 19.7 percent of the time, well below the league average of 25 percent.“He’s a contact hitter with the most power in the league,” Astros starter Mike Burrows said. “He can get to every ball. There’s no cold zone.”None of baseball’s 168 qualified hitters have a higher slugging percentage than Alvarez’s .663 mark. Twenty-one others are slugging at least .500, but none of them have a higher batting average than the .312 clip Alvarez has amassed across his first 202 at-bats.Alvarez is one of seven men in the sport with an on-base percentage of at least .400. The six others have an OPS lower than .975. Alvarez’s is 1.085.“He’s not running into baseballs. He’s just that good at covering both sides of the plate in any speed range,” Astros right-hander Spencer Arrighetti said. “We’ve seen it. It doesn’t matter if you throw 100. It doesn’t matter if you throw 90. It doesn’t matter if you throw the best sweeper, best curveball in baseball, he’s going to f—ing hit it.”Arrighetti is convinced Alvarez “is the purest power hitter that’s ever been, other than Barry Bonds.” As a result, some in the Astros’ dugout have begun to call him “Barry.” After a walk began the ninth inning Wednesday night and guaranteed Alvarez another at-bat, Arrighetti shook his head toward the Texas Rangers reliever who issued it.“Congrats man,” Arrighetti said aloud, “you have to face Barry now.”Being mentioned in the same breath as Bonds is baseball nirvana, a state in which Alvarez seems to always reside. He is authoring the sort of season that will reignite debate about a designated hitter’s place on Most Valuable Player ballots. Bonds won the award seven times as an outfielder.