Bucs Dugout, a Pittsburgh Pirates community

Here's a good story from Jerry Crasnick about the Pedro Alvarez situation, mostly from the perspectives of Alvarez and Scott Boras. It's going to be tough for Alvarez whenever he comes to play in Pittsburgh. No one has ever gotten Alvarez to talk about this situation, and Crasnick says he's basically been "sequestered." The article also reports that he'll work out this semester at Vanderbilt. Alvarez is lucky, in a way, that Boras pulled this stunt on the Pirates and not some other team. If he'd tried it on, say, the Mets, I'm sure there would be journalists heading down to Nashville and asking around about where the gym is.

Here's another excellent article by Baseball Prospectus' Kevin Goldstein regarding the Pedro Alvarez situation. Goldstein describes the various possibilities the arbitrator might consider, describes why most of them will rip off one party or another, then speculates that because of this, it is likely the arbitrator will decide that because Alvarez is not a member of the union, he cannot "provide a remedy" for him. In this case, I assume what would happen is that the arbitrator would tell Major League Baseball to stop extending the deadline, but allow the Alvarez and Eric Hosmer contracts to stand. This obviously would be fine with me.

Kevin Goldstein at Baseball Prospectus provides some of the specifics on the Pedro Alvarez case (subscription required). I don't have any additional comments on the Alvarez situation right now, but if you've got a BP subscription, this is a useful reference.