Gabe Alvarez

USC baseball great and former major leaguer Gabe Alvarez is set to enter his 11th season as an assistant coach at USC in the 2021 season. Alvarez also serves as the recruiting coordinator and hitting coach for the Trojans.

The team’s official recruiting coordinator since 2015, Alvarez has helped produce multiple Top 25 recruiting classes and was named one of the nation’s Top 30 recruiters by D1Baseball.com in 2016. The Trojans’ 2018 class was ranked No. 14 in the country by Baseball America and was the top ranked class in the west by Perfect Game. The 2017 class was ranked 17th nationally.

A standout infielder himself, Alvarez has helped the Trojans develop one of the best defensive infields in the nation during his tenure. As a team, USC has had at least a .973 fielding percentage eight of the last 10 seasons and the infield has turned at least 40 double plays seven of the last eight years as well (excluding the shortened 2020 season. Alvarez has helped develop four All-Pac-12 first team infielders during his tenure and coached third baseman Brandon Perez to Gold Glove honors in 2018. 2020 was his first season as the hitting coach for USC, and in the pandemic-shortened campaign, the Trojans batted .281, 63 points higher than their opponents.

Alvarez played at USC as a shortstop from 1993-95 and had a career .338 batting average for the Trojans, with 28 home runs and 163 RBI. He earned Baseball America All-America second team honors in his 1993 freshman season after batting .326 with eight home runs and 53 RBI. In 1994, he was a first team All-America pick by the National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association after batting .326 with seven home runs and 51 RBI. In 1995, he was part of the Trojan squad that made its first trip to the College World Series since 1978 as USC reached the national title game. After batting .361 with 13 home runs and 59 RBI, Alvarez earned ABCA and NCBWA All-America first team, Collegiate Baseball All-America second team and Baseball America All-America third team honors.

He was a second-round selection in the 1995 major league baseball draft by the San Diego Padres and played three seasons in the major leagues (1998-2000). He was drafted by the Arizona Diamondbacks in the 1997 expansion draft before being traded to the Detroit Tigers. He made his debut in 1998 with the Tigers and was eventually traded to the San Diego Padres in 2000, where he finished his career by playing 92 total major league games.