Over at Bucs Dugout, MarkInDallas has a new article that suggests that struggling Pirates third baseman Pedro Alvarez has never really demonstrated an approach that's likely to lead to sustained success at the major-league level.
↵↵↵Sadly, the Pirates mishandled his development two years ago, and now we are stuck watching the Pedro dirigible go down in slow motion while everyone crosses their fingers that gravity might be reversed for just one day. It’s time to send him down and use his last option. The longer they wait, the less time he will have to get things turned around because next year, he will have to sink or swim in MLB.
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The idea here is that Alvarez has always struck out too frequently, even in 2010, when it looked like he was doing reasonably well. Alvarez needs to strike out less, and in order to do that, he probably needs to learn in the minors.
↵Mark's conclusion, which uses statistics to make his point, matches what I've seen visually. The problem with Alvarez isn't a simple one. It isn't as if he just needs to make simple adjustments, or at least that's not how it appears. It's that he's being completely confused and blown away. He can work on that in the minors. In fact, it might be better for him to work on that down there, where he has some chance of success.