Pedro Alvarez Becoming A Serious Concern

And looking back on it, Alvarez’s minor-league profile is filled with warning signs that I and others were probably guilty of worrying too little about, due to his pedigree.

No, I think you, Vlad and some notable others here passed plenty of warnings about Alvarez about his performance at the plate and in the field.

He wasn’t ready at all one day in ‘10, and then the next one he was recalled because the Pirates just HAD to get him to the majors to join other talented young players like Cutch, Walker and Tabata. Then they had to recall him a few weeks ago when Hurdle et al. admitted they really didn’t want to due to his deficiencies in the field and at the plate that had not been remedied.

This has been a mess since midnight August whatever in ‘08 when he supposedly agreed to a contract and then didn’t and then….

My feeling is that they need to be selective with his starts the rest of the year, keep working hard with him on his mechanics and approach at the plate, and then this winter get him moved across the diamond to be a first basemen.

I still have hopes that he will be a good player for us.

I’m concerned, and not bat-shit crazy about his existence, character, baseball play, etc.

“jerking him around”. His stay in Indy this year was more of an extended rehab assignment than an actual demotion and his play at the major-league level this year has been poor enough to warrant a demotion. Posters mention that he has already proven that he can handle AAA pitchers, but NH mentioned that a lot of his hits this year at that level were not well struck.

Beyond the possibility that Pedro could benefit from additional development time, I see two additional advantages to sending him down. It gives us a chance to get an extended look at either Brandon Wood or Steve Pearce. Wood has hit a little better than Pedro this year and his fielding has been much better. Pearce has not been good but has never really been given the chance to get regular ABs at the ML level. It is probably against the odds that either one of these guys would develop into solid players, but it seems to me under the circumstances it would be worthwhile to find out.

Since Pedro will still have an option left next season, we might at least think about keeping him in the minors long enough for us to get an extra year of control. This could be huge for us a few years down the road if Pedro actually does develop into the player we thought he could become. I’m not saying we should leave him down there if he demonstrates beyond a reasonable doubt that he is ready for a promotion, but right now it does not appear at all clear that he belongs in the bigs and I don’t see much advantage to the Bucs to keeping him up here.

But even though he has looked lost at the plate, it’s his all around game that bothers me. He has not been good in the field and his base running hasn’t been good either. He really needs to work on his entire game. I really don’t know what the best is for him at this point, stay up or go back down, but I know the teams record isn’t very good with him in the lineup and when you are trying to actually compete that’s not a good thing. I do know it is disheartening to watch him play right now, those double plays made me sick and wish he actually would’ve struck out instead, those were rally killers. I won’t count him out at this point though but I also won’t count on him to become what we all thought he could be either.

He crushed it at the end of the year last year and this year did well against minor league pitching. Maybe he could learn to cut down on strikeouts in the minors but face it his time in Pittsburgh is now. He needs to learn how to hit MLB pitching and only one way of doing that. Send him out there day in and day out. Keep your fingers crossed. The most hype since Barry Bonds could be the biggest flop since Bullington.

I think those three DP’s are getting blown way out of proportion. I’d much rather have him make contact than strike out, and the fact that he made contact three times and each time hit it right at some one is alot more luck I think than anything else. If two of those grounders find a hole (and at least two of them were hit pretty damn hard) then were all talking about how pedro had a great night and grabbed 3 or 4 RBI’s. You can talk about how he shouldn’t be pulling the ball, etc, etc, but only one of those was a weak roller, and the others he hit pretty well. I’m not saying he shouldn’t be a concern, but I don’t think his play last night warrants all this benching bust talk. Hopefully, he gets better, but I dont the sky’s falling cause he grounded into a few DP’s.

slowest bat I have ever seen. Can’t hit the fastball, can’t hit offspeed pitches. What a bust.

Paydro makes Chad Hermansen look like a Hall of Famer. I don’t think Paydro takes instruction well. He is being told to go to left center, so he rolls three ground balls into DP’s.

El Toro is El Busto.

been a real factor in slowing Pedro’s development. He finished 2010 on the upswing, and then early this season goes down for a significant period of time. He returns while the club is contending for the division lead in late July, and may just be pressing too much at the plate and defensively.

He’s still young, but I would expect to see improvement the rest of this season, then take a larger stride in 2012.

for some kind of “trial by fire” coaching, while filling the hole at third. I don’t think the problem is that he can’t hit major league pitching, it’s just that he’s an unfinished product. Look at his approach pre-injury to post-recall. April and May, Pedro went out whacking, and whiffing a huge percentage of the time. He had trouble recognizing balls and strikes, and couldn’t survive a two-strike count for the life of him. During his stint in AAA, Pedro clearly worked on a number of his issues. He’s swinging less in zero and one strike counts, and shortening up his swing to foul off two-strike pitches. Nowadays, you do see a lot of six-seven pitch ABs that end in a strikeout. As frustrating as that is, it’s progress. But it’s not complete. Pedro needs to learn to recognize pitches early, especially breaking balls, and recognize sliders, well, at all. The book on him has basically been throw sliders low and off the plate. He needs to learn to take pitches in two-strike counts, and not just foul them off because, hey, he has two strikes on him. Ultimately, Pedro’s hitting approach is poor, but improved. Once he becomes comfortable seeing major-league pitching and being able to make contact, he will improve. He can do that at AAA and Brandon Wood can play third for the Bucs, or he can do that in the majors, hoping that he figures it out quickly. It doesn’t much matter, as the problem is his approach, not the difficulty of the opposing pitchers. Pedro will improve. Pedro is 24. We’ll have to live with his struggles, because eventually, he will figure it out and be a very menacing hitter.

No one’s going to cut Pedro and trading him likely doesn’t make much sense either, but at what point do we move on from considering 3rd base a locked up position for the next few years if nothing changes? End of this season? Middle of next season? ’13?

Not that we close the door on Pedro, but we look at things realistically and admit to ourselves that we don’t have a quality third baseman and we need to get one.

I’m going to re-hash an age old debate here, but Walker’s defense would probably be a massive upgrade from Pedro’s. I think he has hit enough to be tolerable at 3rd if his reported third base defense is as good as it was advertised in the Minors.

Again, I’m not necessarily advocating this, but these are the types of questions we have to start figuring out sooner rather than later. Texas probably felt the same way about Chris Davis before finally conceding he’d never be the 40 HR guy in Arlington they were hoping for.

2011 is over, 2012 is probably another under .500 as well. You ride Pedro to the end, if he doesn’t start producing by mid 2013 I can understand benching him but he is way too young for this type of talk. The replacement options are complete jokes and you don’t abandon 24 year old first round picks, this post is completely against the build long term montra.