I like Pedro Alvarez. I like what drafting him represented for what was a new Pirate front office at the time. I like the way the ball explodes off of his bat towards the right field grand stand. Being in the stands for his improbable walkoff homer against the Rockies is always going to be one of my favorite moments at PNC Park. Sometimes, though, it’s hard to really evaluate players we like, because we want them to succeed so badly that we try to make excuses to explain away some of their flaws.
Pedro Alvarez strikes out a lot. Of players with 310 or more plate appearances, only Mark Reynolds (41.8% of at-bats) and Jack Cust (36.8%) have struck out more regularly than Alvarez (35.8%). Alvarez, though, has a much lower walk rate than most of the other guys that are at the top of the strikeout list, with the exceptions being Mike Stanton (who’s just 20) and Drew Stubbs (who’s not a great hitting prospect). His strikeout per AB rate was awfully high in the minors (27.8% career) as well.
Of course, 17 of those Ks came in his first 39 at-bats. If you toss out everything before July 1, when he started to heat up a bit, his line is .248/.331/.444 and his strikeout rate is a slightly more palatable 34.2%. We all expected an adjustment period for him, so it’s probably not unfair to throw those June numbers out. We all know how he heated up in July, too, but what has me a little concerned is that he just hasn’t bounced back since the pitchers have re-adjusted. He stayed relatively hot through the middle of August, but since August 14th, he’s hitting just .198/.277/.307 with one homer and eight doubles (I’m writing this very early so Baseball Reference isn’t updated to include last night’s triple). That’s actually better than he was his first two weeks up, but it’s still pretty brutal for a top prospect with so many games under his belt.
I don’t want to give the wrong impression here: I’m not panicking or saying that Pedro Alvarez is a bust or that he’s never going to hit Major League pitching. He’s still just 23, this is just his second year of professional baseball, there’s always a learning curve for him at every level he moves to, and frankly it’s awfully hard to make adjustments as a 105+ loss season winds down. I’m not sure “worry” is the right word, but having to come up with a litany of explanations like that for why he still looks lost at the plate most of the time even almost 100 games into his career just makes me a little uneasy. It’s definitely true that guys like Ryan Howard and Carlos Pena are power-hitting lefties that strike out a ton and didn’t “get it” until later in their careers and it’s also true that the Pirates have a couple years to let Pedro figure it out. But it’s also hard to ignore that Alvarez is struggling a lot more in his rookie year than a guy like, say, Prince Fielder did at a much younger age or that while Pena (who looked an awfully lot at 24 like Alvarez does at 23) needed five years and three organizations (and that’s not counting Texas) to finally become one of the league’s better power hitters. It’s hard not to be a little concerned.
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