I didn’t want to rush this post, because I wanted to get all my thoughts together about the Pirates demoting Pedro Alvarez when Jose Tabata was reinstated from the disabled list.
It’s not exactly controversial to say that Alvarez hasn’t hit well in the Majors this year. There’s no measure by which he’s played even acceptable baseball, much less good baseball. Many Pirates bloggers – including myself – had made calls to hold of on calling him a bust just yet (which I still stand by), but it’s looking increasingly likely that he may be just that.
It appears that the biggest mistake the Pirates made was promoting Alvarez at all. I’m guilty of calling for him to be promoted, but the team switched positions almost overnight from “he needs to show more consistency” to “we have a need at the Major League level and we’re promoting him even though he may not really be ready yet.” That’s not the best way to go about handling the guy with the highest power ceiling in the system – if you think he needs more seasoning, fine, but don’t say that and then call him up only to send him back down. Yanking prospects back and forth tends to hurt their careers.
In all likelihood, Alvarez is going to go down to AAA and rake. He’s done it there before, and he’s shown he has no problems hitting AAA pitching. However, this isn’t about the numbers. He needs to make some serious adjustments to his approach if he’s going to have success at the Major League level, and if he has to do that, it’s probably better that he works it out against AAA pitching.
In an ideal world, the Pirates could go back in time and not promote Alvarez in the first place. Getting sent back down may prove to not be the best option for him. But this isn’t an ideal world, and it looks for the moment like it’s the best of two bad choices. Alvarez clearly isn’t doing what he needs to do in the Majors, and perhaps putting him in an environment where there’s less pressure on him will allow him to work on the things he needs to without feeling like he’s letting his teammates down.
