Although today’s ballgame was a horribly played defensive debacle which saw the Pirates commit six (SIX!) errors, it was still a day of hope for Pirates fans, as the uber-prospect we’ve all been waiting for started at third base and hit sixth in the lineup.
If you don’t know who I’m talking about by now, you’ve been living under a rock. Pedro Alvarez has been the biggest name to come to the Majors since Strasburg, and not just for Pirates fans – the third baseman was ranked the eighth best prospect in the Majors to start the year by Baseball America.
Tonight, Alvarez went 0-for-2 at the plate with a walk and a strikeout. He also committed and error in the field, leaving him a homer shy of what I refer to as the Adam Dunn cycle. (Speaking of which, Alvarez has zero home runs this year! Clearly it’s time to bench him to get Ryan Church into the lineup!)
Not to sound like a wet blanket, but this is the kind of production I expect from him at first. At each level of his pro career this far, Alvarez has started out with about a month’s time of being a player who will either walk, strike out, or hit a home run before adjusting to the level and becoming a more dynamic hitter who will also have a respectable batting average. This is not unusual for players like Alvarez, and even if he struggles out of the gate, by the end of the year everyone should start to realize what a special talent he is.
Overall, Alvarez looked very patient at the plate, working deep into counts in every plate appearance. That type of patience will not only lead to better pitches to hit and more walks, it will also make starting pitchers work harder, which is always a plus.
As for the rest of the game, it was mostly uninspiring. The aforementioned six errors were committed by Bobby Crosby twice, Javier Lopez, Ryan Doumit, Pedro Alvarez and Neil Walker. Aside from Walker, nobody expects any of these guys to be good fielders, and Walker can be forgiven since he’s still got barely over a month of experience at second under his belt. Still, six errors is inexcusable even to a person who hates the error statistic.
However, there were also some encouraging things, as Jose Tabata hit his first Major League home run and Lastings Milledge went 2-for-3 with a double, which will hopefully keep him in the lineup instead of Ryan Church and his .179/.220/.308 line.
On another note all together, I realize how late I am on this, but the corresponding move to bring Alvarez up was to designate Aki Iwamura for assignment. The team has said that they hope to work out a trade in the next ten days, but considering how disappointing Iwamura has been all year, I’m not optimistic that anything will get done, or that even if anything does get done that anything even remotely interesting will be coming our way.
