The Pedro Alvarez era in Pittsburgh has ended. The Pirates decided to non-tender Alvarez as last night’s midnight deadline to make offers to arbitration-eligible players approached, meaning that Alvarez is officially a free agent. Besides Alvarez, the Pirates also non-tendered Jaff Decker while offering contracts to each of their other arbitration-eligible players.
There was a lot of debate about this and a lot of people seem surprised/upset by the news, but honestly, it seemed to me like the decision had been made by the time the season ended. I keep trying to find ways to say that Pedro Alvarez was unfathomably bad at first base, but I think that that word actually applies here; he was so bad that most people actually don’t seem to believe that it’s possible for a first baseman to be as bad as his defensive numbers said he was in 2015. His UZR/150 last year was -26.5, which means that his defense alone would cost the Pirates 2 1/2 wins vs. an average first baseman over the course of a season. That’s absolutely nuts if you look at how bad the worst first baseman usually are (you really can hide bad fielders there). Instead of trying to drive home an abstract point about advanced defensive metrics, though, I’ll put it like this: if your first baseman is such a defensive liability that you feel the need to start Sean Rodriguez in a winner-take-all playoff game, just to ensure that Alvarez isn’t on the field defensively for all nine innings, how likely are you to want to pay the guy $8 million a year? His bat is good, but it’s not that good; he had a career-year at the plate with a 114 wRC+, which is nice enough, but also behind Francisco Cervelli. By FanGraphs, he’s been worth a total of 0.2 WAR over the last two seasons. By Baseball-Reference, it’s only a marginally better 0.8 wins. If he matches that FanGraphs performance again in 2016, that means that an $8 million salary is $80 million/win .
I’m sure that Alvarez will find work in the American League in 2016, and I’m sure that he’ll be a decent DH. Maybe the Pirates could’ve found a trade partner willing to take him if they were willing to look harder. I don’t think the return for him would’ve been much of anything, though, at an arbitration level-price and cutting Alvarez loose gives them some certainty. They know the money is off the books and can be spent elsewhere, they know the roster spot is open, they know what the first base situation is. Honestly, Alvarez’s horrifying defense at first base meant that it was just time to move on, and this Pirate front office doesn’t have any time for sentiment. Even with all of the home runs that Alvarez will take with him to the American League, the Pirates will be better without his glove in the infield next year.
All of this being said, Pedro Alvarez will always hold a special place in my heart as a Pirate fan. I didn’t honestly believe Neal Huntington would draft him until the second they read his name. I didn’t honestly believe the team would sign a Boras client until the news broke after midnight on August 16th of 2008 that they’d pulled it off. After years of obviously bad safe drafting, the Pirates hired a new front office that promised to open the checkbook and draft the best players, and they delivered on that promise with their first pick. It was a long five years between June of 2008 and August of 2013, but after the Pirates picked Alvarez and signed him, everything seemed a little bit more possible. Honestly, there were years when it seemed like the only thing we had as Pirate fans was this video of Alvarez mashing a home run to the moon in a Vanderbilt uniform while some poor sap tried to start an “over-rated” chant, and we were happy to have that because it was much more than anything we’d had in the past. Alvarez never turned into the Prince Fielder that we were all hoping for, but he mashed enough Cardinal pitching over the years to be an important part of the the first Pirate playoff teams in a generation. He hit the most exciting home run I’ve ever seen in person (NOTE: It’s difficult to differentiate between this one and the Mackowiak double-header, but Pedro hitting bombs in huge spots in 2010 really stood for something different, so let’s differentiate between EXCITING and DRAMATIC here, there’s room for everyone!). In between drafting Pedro Alvarez and non-tendering him, the Pirates have come an unfathomable distance. Alvarez didn’t turn out to be the most important player in that transformation, but he was part of it all the same. That’s worth something to me as a fan; best of luck in the American League, Pedro.
Photo by Jared Wickerham/Getty Image
