Are Pedro Alvarez's K’s in AAA Cause for Concern?

The Pirates and their fans have big hopes for Pedro Alvarez. With visions of a cornerstone lefthanded slugger, scouting director Greg Smith was authorized $6 Million by ownership to sign the second overall pick in the 2008 Draft.

Almost two years later, the third baseman isn’t dominating but he’s holding his own just one level down from Pittsburgh, hitting .248-7-29 with a .336 OBP and .479 SLG in his first 117 at-bats for AAA Indianapolis. Panning across the stat line, one can also see he’s struck out 34 times, which projects to over 150 in 600 plate appearances. Could that alone mean Alvarez stays in AAA a little longer?

I speculated in my April 23rd article (When is Pedro Coming to Pittsburgh?) that Alvarez would be up by early June because the Pirates so desperately need his bat and the fans need his beacon; but I wrote that Neal Huntington would never call him up in April because the organization wanted to keep the clock from ticking towards his arbitration years. By waiting till later in the year, the Pirates would have three more full seasons before Alvarez could finally go to arbitration after the 2013 season.

I can understand why Pirates fans might look at his stat line, especially his strikeouts and .248 average, and wonder if Alvarez is really ready for the big time.

Surely, if you strike out 150 times in AAA, you’re probably going to strike out more than 200 in MLB, right? Should we be concerned about Alvarez?

The answer is….. Yes, but that’s what the minor leagues are for.

Undoubtedly, the Pirates would like to see Alvarez make more consistent contact. I have not been to any of his International League games thus far in 2010, but I’ve seen plenty of AAA Baseball in my lifetime and have an idea of what he’s facing.

Casual baseball fans are right to assume that the competition increases as you climb the ladder in professional baseball, from rookie-league, to Single-A, to AA, to AAA. But such a blanket statement doesn’t tell the whole story.

I will guarantee you that there are more power arms and better stuff in AA than there are in AAA. There are more pitching prospects in AA than there are in AAA. How is that so?

What you have in AAA are a lot of veterans, the average age is much older than AA. You have 28 and 32 year-olds in AAA, but hardly ever in AA. Many of them have pitched in the big leagues and are on their way down, not on the way up. They’re filling roster spots, making the AAA club competitive, but they aren’t considered prime prospects. The prime pitching prospects tend to bottleneck in AA; when they get to AAA, they are outnumbered by the wily veterans.

I’m generalizing, but the wily veterans don’t throw as hard or have the same good stuff as the young whipper-snappers in the lower levels. But they know how to pitch! They know how to maximize what they have. They may throw 86-88 MPH instead of 90-94 MPH, but they can set hitters up, put it on the black, and give them comfortable 0-fers all day long. Especially an eager beaver with a great swing, like Pedro Alvarez.

Pedro Alvarez has the swing to hit just about any major league fastball with authority, a swing he possessed at Vanderbilt, long before joining the Pirates organization. Those are the raw tools of becoming a hitter, but for it to turn into results at the big league level he has to learn big league discipline and approach. He has to learn the finer aspects of hitting, like working a count, fouling off tough pitches, developing a good eye, going the other way, etc.

Triple-A is filled with pitchers who can exploit weaknesses like those. They can’t always blow hitters away, but they can carve them up. That’s exactly why Alvarez is there, he needs to face those kinds of pitchers and learn to hit them. He can hit the “throwers”, now he needs to hit the “pitchers”. So in that sense, I’m not surprised and not really disappointed that he’s striking out so much in the International League two years out of college.

It’s not much worse than what he did between high Single-A Lynchburg and Double-A Altoona in 2009, where Alvarez struck out every 4.16 plate appearances. He’s at once every 3.85 PA in AAA Indy. The fact that his “K rate” has only slightly increased against the much craftier pitching tells me that he’s actually improved as a contact hitter.

What’s funny is comparing Alvarez to Mark Reynolds, the notoriously free-swinging slugging third baseman of the Arizona Diamondbacks. I scouted (actually, mis-scouted) the righthanded Reynolds in high Single-A while working for the Cardinals. If you look at his minor league record, Reynolds never struck out at anywhere near the rate he does in the big leagues. Would you believe the most he ever struck out was 109 times, during the 2006 season he split between High-A and AA? His career minor league strikeout rate was similar to Alvarez’s (once in 4.1 plate appearances) prior to Alvarez reaching AAA.

What I find further intriguing is that Reynolds never played in AAA! The Diamondbacks promoted him to the big club directly from AA in the middle of the 2007 season. Reynolds struck out 129 times in 414 plate appearances that year (1 in 3.2 PA!), set a major league record with 204 in 2008, and then broke it with 223 in 2009. For his big league career, he’s striking out once every 3.1 plate appearances. That’s one at-bat less per strikeout than what Reynolds did in the minors.

Reynolds hit 44 home runs and ended up getting MVP Votes last year (finishing 20th according to Baseball-Reference) so it’s not all bad. In fact there’s quite a bit of debate going both ways as to how good of a player he really is, he also makes a lot of errors at third. But I wonder aloud if his skipping AAA left him ill-prepared to hit big league junk. Reynolds never went through what Pedro Alvarez is going through right now. Whatever you think the merits are of his hitting style, there’s not a person on the Diamondback coaching staff who wouldn’t want to see more of Reynolds’ strikeouts turn into productive outs instead.

So what am I saying about Pedro? I’m admitting that, yes, Pedro Alvarez is striking out an awful lot and he does have holes in his approach. He may not be ready by early June (as I so boldly proclaimed) if he doesn’t make strides the rest of the month.

But I’m also saying that this is what the minor leagues are for, they are for young players to struggle and learn. Alvarez is in AAA to polish his defense, of course, but also to learn how to hit junk. If it takes a few more weeks, a few more months, or even a year or longer, that’s fine, but perhaps we all, myself included, need to be more patient with his development so when he does come up, he’s raring to go.