In a different thread I got into a discussion of Pedro Alvarez and what I thought of his performance. It caused me to take a close look at the numbers and see what they told me. But before I go through that and draw some conclusions, let me make some things clear so that they don't become part of the conversation. 1.) I like Pedro and am rooting hard for him to succeed. 2.) Pedro works and is working very hard to get better. I've seen it personally. 3.) Surprisingly, Pedro has been an above average third baseman in the field this year in my opinion. Friday night he made his second spectacular (to my eyes) play of the season and Saturday night he made three difficult plays look routine. His arm grades 80 on a scout's scale. 4.) This post is not about his defense or whether he should stay at third or move to first. It's about his bat.

Some facts: Pedro came up to the major leagues in June of last year and played his first game June 16th. He has only played 104 games in his career, not even 2/3 of a full major league season. He has started slow at every level and then proceeded to be successful at that level over a relatively short period of time. He is 24 years old and has the time and ability to improve dramatically.

With that out of the way, the purpose of the post was to see how Pedro has hit. I am going to put up some charts and I think the numbers speak for themselves, but I think the breakdown of the stats is worth discussing. There is a belief among a lot of people in the game and scouts like Keith Law and writers like Rob Neyer that September numbers need to be contextualized because of the expansion of rosters from 25 to 40. The reason is obvious, I think. Team's out of the pennant race, like the Pirates, will use that time to audition players for next year's team. If you look at who the Pirates threw out on the mound last year in September you'll see a lot of arms not in the majors today.

In the Pirates last ten games, the opposing team's starting pitchers were Brett Myers, Bud Norris, J.A. Happ, Kyle Lohse, Jeff Suppan, P.J Walters, Chris Volstad, Adalberto Mendez, Jorge Sosa and Anibal Sanchez. The average baseball fan probably recognizes half those names. Some good pitchers and some not so good pitchers. The point is that in September many teams will rest or shutdown guys who are approaching high innings counts and don't need to pitch in meaningless games. The talent pool becomes much more AAAA than what you see during the rest of the season. I wanted to look at Pedro's numbers taking that into account. I am NOT dismissing Pedro's September numbers. He had a torrid September and that is worth a lot. But, I wanted to compare September to everything else and take a look at his numbers without his hot September. Here they are:

Here are some additional numbers:

Alvarez is also showing some interesting early-career splits:

.802 OPS against RHP and .649 against LHP.

.840 OPS at home in 53 games and 217 PAs and .663 away in 51 games and 209 PA.

At this early stage I don't want to jump to too many conclusions, but clearly the strikeout rate is a major issue. Pedro has shown thus far that he is able to draw walks at above the league-average level despite only drawing two walks, both in Friday night's game, so far this year. There is obviously a lot of other data that can be looked at to draw conclusions, ISO, wOBA, spray charts, etc. But, C-Death said he wanted to see some articles with some analysis and I thought this might be interesting to look at.

Simply said, whether you agree with the premise or not, without his numbers from September of last year which may have come against sub-standard pitching, Pedro has not shown very much with the bat thus far in his career. That certainly doesn't mean he won't. But, relying on the "he's a slow starter" seems like too convenient of an answer. His at-bats haven't looked good to me so far this year and he only has one extra base hit. Fangraphs shows in GB% similar to last year and LD% slightly higher by the same amount FB% is lower, so nothing is evident there.

Maybe it's just a slow start and he'll pick up his September pace as the weather warms up today. I hope so. Doesn't mean I'm not a little concerned.