People are freaking out over Pedro Alvarez not being promoted. Freaking. Out. Ron Cook has applied the most twisted logic I’ve ever seen to link how Pedro Alvarez does this week to Neal Huntington’s fate as general manager.* I wanted to see Alvarez this week, too, but there are certainly good arguments against calling him up right now.
*If I’m following Cook here correctly, he thinks Huntington has done a great job rebuilding the minor league system and his work is being praised by nebulous “baseball people” that Cook clearly holds in high esteem, but that’s not good enough, dammit, because the Pirates suck. So, what I can parse out of Cook’s “logic” (term applied loosely) is that Huntington acquired what must have been a bad farm system (he had to rebuild it) and what was universally considered to be a bad team (it’s hard to argue with a 68-92 record), but has somehow screwed up by focusing on rebuilding the minors and not doing a good job spinning crap into gold with the trades he’s made. Therefore, Cook’s hypothesis here must be that the quality of a team’s minor league system has absolutely no bearing on future Major League performance. Uh, except for Pedro Alvarez, who is the universal litmus test for successful farm systems.
The big league learning curve is different for every player and for players that strike out a ton and don’t hit for great batting average, it’s going to be steep. I’ve written about this before, but Carlos Pena was expected to be an immediate success after moving through the minors with numbers that are not unlike Alvarez’s numbers. The A’s made him Jason Giambi’s replacement in 2004 at the age of 24, but it wasn’t until 2007 that he finally reconciled his power and strikeouts to become an elite power hitter. Ryan Howard was in Advanced-A ball at the age that Alvarez is now.
Of course, not all left power hitters have struggled early in their careers. Prince Fielder was decent as a 22-year old rookie in 2006 and spectacular as a 23-year old in 2007. Adam Dunn was a solid player despite a low batting average in 2002 and 2003 (at the ages of 22 and 23) and exploded in 2004. But it still took both these guys at least a full season, which Alvarez won’t have no matter what this year, before hitting their stride.
Alvarez is talented. He’s well-regarded by scouts. He’ll probably fall into the category of guys that adjust relatively quickly (and again, not everyone is Andrew McCutchen, adjusting quickly for a player like Alvarez is different than a player like McCutchen). But once he’s up, he’s up. The Pirates get him for six years and then he’s probably gone. He’s one of their most valuable assets, so it’s hard to fault them for being careful with him, especially given that he’s played only a little more than a full season of professional baseball and just 125 games above A-ball with a propensity to slump from time to time. He’ll be a Pirate and he’ll probably be a Pirate sooner rather than later. Really, what difference will another two weeks or month make?
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