The one where we rush to judge Pedro and Posey

Adam Dunn is a very valuable baseball player, albeit one with an unusually skewed skill set. If Dunn had played on better teams he’d be held in much higher regard.

Plus, whereas Dunn is a negative fielder no matter where you put him on the field, Pedro’s showing at third thus far leads me to believe he’ll be a slightly subpar 3B or a slightly above-average 1B for years to come. That’s more valuable than a RF/1B with no range.

What I’m saying is, I think Pedro will turn out to be a better player than Dunn, but if he can hit & walk like Dunn with marginally more value in the field, that’s a very very good player to have.

The actual answer to your question is no, knowing what we know now I would still take Pedro. Maybe in another year or two I’ll feel differently.

But I do know that, at the time, I was kind of pulling for Posey over Alvarez. I don’t know that I had any better reason than thinking it was a good idea to get a top 5 catcher if he was available. There’s clearly not enough data yet to be decisive either way, but Posey has certainly shown himself to be worthwhile. As one would hope, the #4 overall pick was a no-lose position.

…I obviously wasn’t as high on Posey at the time of the draft as I should have been.

But we still need to see how things work out… especially being a catcher, he’s going to be under significant strain… he might, but its not a slam dunk that he’ll keep this level of offensive performance up over the next 3 years… let’s see.

Also, Smoak should serve as a cautionary tale to some extent… sure isn’t looking so hot now huh?

I think Pedro has more offensive upside than anyone on Law’s list. I’m starting to agree with VLad though that I don’t think he has the ability to be league average at 3rd so the question is how good can his defense be at first. This may not happen until 2012 but the question needs to be asked because or IF defense is just awful.

I supported Pedro over Posey and Smoak at the time, but it was a tough call. The Ks concerned me, but the Pirates desperately needed POWER and Pedro seemed the surest bet to provide it .

as expected. He’ll show solid power, but the rest of it reeks of strikeouts, slumps and bad defense. His body type isn’t going to age well, either. We’ll let him go as soon as he is free to go, and I’m betting we do it with little regret.

The problem with the question about who the Pirates should have drafted is that Pedro, by many accounts, was the second-best player available in the draft. Sure, there were certain individuals (Keith Law, most notably) who had Pedro ranked lower, but the consensus was that Alvarez was only behind Strasburg overall.

If the Pirates hadn’t drafted him, going instead for Posey or Smoak or Hosmer, they would have been accused by the Yinzer crowd of going the cheap route and not taking the best player available. We can’t sit here and say “well, based on the results of one-half season’s worth of data, damn, the Pirates sure screwed that pick up and should have taken Posey” because no one was clamoring for Posey on draft day. We all wanted Pedro, and we all would have torn the Pirates to shreds if they hadn’t picked him, saying, “It’s just like Moskos over Wieters all over again.”

Pedro probably won’t be a first-ballot HOFer, but how many guys are? He’s going to hit a good amount of HR, have a mediocre BA and OBP, K a lot and make some E’s, but seriously, lighten up, Francis. Pedro’s going to be just fine.