Venezuelan 21-year-old phenom, Henderson Alvarez, is having a dream season as one of the Toronto Blue Jays top 10 prospects for the 2011 season. Starting out his 2011 campaign with the Dunedin Blue Jays, Alvarez only needed two starts and 8.1 innings pitched to show Toronto Blue Jays GM Alex Anthopoulos that he deserved a promotion.

After spending the majority of the 2011 season with the New Hampshire Fisher Cats, Alvarez received a phone call from Anthopoulos on Monday, August 8, 2011. That phone call was to inform Henderson Alvarez, that his time to shine in the big leagues has finally arrived.

Set to make his debut with the Toronto Blue Jays on Wednesday, August 10th, against the hot-swinging Oakland Athletics, Alvarez is being thrown into the fire rather than eased into things like other Jays’ recent call-up, Brett Lawrie. According to Arden Zwelling of Sportsnet Magazine, the Venezuelan born Alvarez possesses four pitches, a fastball, change up, slider and curveball. In fact, according to Zwelling’s twitter, Alvarez fastball has hit triple digits during his stint in New Hampshire.

 What’s more, similar to Dunedin Blue Jays staff ace Nestor Molina, Henderson Alvarez was an infielder growing up in Venezuela, before transitioning to the pitching staff. Also comparable to Molina, is Alvarez ability to work quickly during games, striking out a lot of batters while limiting his walks. For instance, throughout his 2011 minor league career, Alvarez has struck out 70 while only giving up 17 walks on the season.

 At 21 years old, Alvarez is still a very raw talent with a ton of potential. Amongst the Jays Prospects staff, our general consensus is that Alvarez can either be a back of the rotation starter or a quality reliever, perhaps even a set up man. The big issue with Alvarez right now, as I noted, is that he is still raw. For example, according to fellow Jays Prospects writer, Kris Kennedy. in reference to Alavarez last start on Friday August 5th, “(Alvarez) left too many fastballs over the plate, leading to the batters handling him pretty well” … “As Alvarez gets older and a little more experienced, you could see him averaging 93 – 95 MPH fastballs, and if he can start living on the edge of the strike zone, he can be very effective and dangerous.”

What this tells me is that Alvarez has a ton of potential to dominate at the big league level. The question for Wednesday’s game, will be can Henderson Alvarez handle the pressure of both facing an awesome team like the Athletics and the hometown crowd in Toronto? We, of course, wish him the best of luck.