Pirates third baseman Pedro Alvarez’s throwing issues have gotten so bad--including an MLB-leading 21 of his 23 errors on throws--that Jenn Menendez of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette reports the team is starting to look into “the mental component to find the root of the problem.”
Alvarez has always been a poor defender at third base and eventually moving across the diamond to first base has long been discussed as a possibility. Prior to this season he committed 85 errors in 3,965 innings at third base, or one every 47 innings. This season he’s made an error every 34 innings. Ultimate Zone Rating pegs him as a career-worst 9.4 runs below average this year.
An easy solution would be moving Alvarez to first base, but a) the Pirates may not want to do that in the middle of a season, b) Ike Davis has been reasonably productive there since they acquired him from the Mets, and c) Alvarez’s current .707 OPS would look even worse at first base than it does at first base. They have to fix him defensively and, if they can’t, they have to decide if his 30-homer power is worth putting up with the low batting average, low on-base percentage, and tons of strikeouts from first base.
